Mirrors World of Darkness Bleeding Edge and Infinite Masa

Bleeding Edge
Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)
Cyberpunk destroyed science fiction.

Science fiction was about mans potential. Science fiction was about how man could reach out
and touch the stars. We could be better. We could be worse. All we needed was the technology.
Cyberpunk was not that. Cyberpunk said man would be the same damn bastard he always
was, hed have the same problems he always did, and worst of all? Hed still be happy with it. In
those days, cyberpunk was arcologies and AIs. Built-in shades and monomolecular razor-wire.
Seems a little silly now, right? The technology didnt turn out that way. But the world did.
Technology is pervasive and invasive and amazing and all it has done is made us more who we
were before.
Sound like the World of Darkness? It should.
This book includes:
Themes and props for two styles of cyberpunk game: Tomorrow Country and Metalground
Origin, Role and Plugin Merits to add mechanical elements to your characters background,
occupation, and technological implants
A new kind of Morality: Alienation
Credits
Written by: Russell Bailey

Inspired by Material from: Stephen Herron
Special Thanks to: Benjamin Baugh
World of Darkness created by Mark ReinHagen
Developer: Eddy Webb
Editor: Genevieve Podleski
Art Director: Richard Thomas
Book Design: Ron Thompson
Interior Art: Brian LeBlanc
Cover Art: Mathias Kollros
2010 CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only.
White Wolf and Vampire the Requiem are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. The World of Darkness,
Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean the Created, Changeling the Lost,
Hunter the Vigil and Geist the Sin-Eaters 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.
This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction
and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised.
Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com
Bleeding Edge
Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness

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Cyberpunk destroyed science fiction.

Science fiction was about mans potential. Science fiction was about
how man could reach out and touch the stars. We could be better. We could
be worse. All we needed was the technology.
Cyberpunk? Cyberpunk was not that. Cyberpunk said man would be the
same damn bastard he always was, hed have the same problems he always
did, and worst of all? Hed still be happy with it. In those days, cyberpunk
was arcologies and AIs. Built-in shades and monomolecular razor-wire.
Seems a little silly now, right? The technology didnt turn out that way.
But the world did. Technology is pervasive and invasive and amazing and
all it has done is made us more who we were before.
Sound like the World of Darkness? It should.
And just like the World of Darkness, cyberpunk is about those people
who cant quite hack it. Who grind against the gears in the system: outsiders,
junkies, survivors and killers.
Enough with the

Tough Talk
As it turns out, cyberpunk destroyed science fiction the same way the
Sex Pistols destroyed rock and roll: articulately and furiously, fed up with the
system but more about tearing it down than flipping it off. Science fiction
and fantasy were starting to diverge commercially, and the information age
was coming up fast. That the American future was something other than
nuclear annihilation or a golden age filmed in Technicolor was getting pretty
obvious. As Americans looked at Japan, they thought that just maybe the
future would pass them by.
Cyberpunks defining novel is William Gibsons Neuromancer, released
in a 1984 that distinctly and happily failed to be 1984. The biggest spectacle
out of the Super Bowl that year wasnt the game, but ads for two computer
companies that aired partway through. Neuromancer pushed in the same
direction. The novel establishes many of the conventions of the genre:
criminal hackers, deadly mercenaries, artificial intelligences and the omnipresence of massive corporations along with their products and branding.
In Neuromancer, no one is local; the core characters are expatriates living
in Japan.
Neuromancer was followed by two loose sequels, further developing
computers as metaphor for human memory. Its success led to an explosion
4
BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
in cyberpunk publishing. Bruce Sterlings 1988 novel

Islands in the Net follows a public relations agent turned
diplomat across a world on fire.
The same year, writer/director Katsuhiro Otomo
released Akira. Akira combined a post-apocalyptic
backstory with a story of young gang members in a Tokyo rebuilt to several times its original size and density.
Although the films bookend apocalypses and effective
authoritarian governments depart from American cyberpunk, Akiras Neo-Tokyo nails the look, something which
had only been suggested in passing by Ridley Scotts 1982
sci-fi noir detective film Blade Runner.
Japanese fiction would continue to contribute to
the development and aesthetics of cyberpunk. Gibson,
Sterling and others had looked to Japan for aesthetic
inspiration from very early on. The North American
fascination with Japanese industry and technology likely
contributed to the prominence of Japanese settings and
corporations in Neuromancer. In 1989, Masamune Shirow began publishing Ghost in the Shell. Where Gibsons
cyberpunk drew heavily on detective and crime fiction,
Shirow married it to the police story.
By 1992, when science fiction was beginning to
change direction, Neal Stephenson released Snow Crash.
Snow Crash was rooted in the cyberpunk tradition even
as it caricatured it. As with Gibson and Sterlings 1990
novel, The Difference Engine, Snow Crash proposes that
the effects of information technologyas well as the
will to repurpose itarent limited to the future or even
the modern day.
By this time, cyberpunk gaming had kicked off Cyberpunk 2013 and the magic-meet-cyberware Shadowrun
were both hits. In 1991, Vampire: The Masquerade
introduced Gothic-Punk, substituting an ancient conspiracy of monsters for totalitarian governments and
megacorporations. The early years of Vampire played
strongly on cyberpunk aesthetics, from worldview all the
way to art and fashion. White Wolfs official magazine
even proposed integrating the Cyberpunk roleplaying
game with The Masquerade, publishing three columns
under the banner A World of Future Darkness. As the
World of Darkness grew, though, the present and the
past became more than enough to occupy White Wolf.
The future of the World of Darkness, near or far, was
never explored again.
Until now.
The modern World of Darkness incorporates many
kinds of horror, from the gothic and Lovecraftian to
the hyper-real and psychological. Likewise, a cyberpunk
World of Darkness draws from the hardboiled hackers of
Neuromancer, the action-movie post-cyberpunk of Neal
Stephensons Snow Crash and the Japanese cyberpunk
of Ghost in the Shell. Well strip them for parts and wire
those up to the World of Darkness we know. As Gibson

wrote, the street finds its own uses for things.
How to Use this

Book
This book explores how to create your own setting

by blending core elements of cyberpunk with the World
of Darkness and the Storytelling System. As with all
World of Darkness products, and particularly Mirrors, its
intended as a toolkit from which youll pick and choose
and bend and solder. DIYs a big part of what makes punk
work, so youll want to cherry-pick our sounds to make
your own wall of noise.
Given that, the rules here can be used either by
themselves or individually. Weve provided a complete
set of cyberpunk hacks, but the connections between
them are strictly optional.
There are two basic reasons to play cyberpunk, and
theyre not exclusive. One is to harness the themes of cyberpunk fiction. To play stories about high-tech lowlifes.
To explore how entities too big for us to comprehend
come from people just like us.
The second is to play with the particulars of cyberpunk settings. Cyberspace, implanted glasses, megacorporations, coffin hotels and girls with fingers like razors.
Well call these the props.
Props change depending on when and where you set
your game. A lot of media similar to cyberpunk barely
uses technology at all think Mirrors Edge or The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo. If youre into the themes, but
not so much the props, you might use the supernatural
in place of the scientific. The Seers of the Throne step
into the role of megacorp oficers, while the Ordo Dracul
performs horrific augmentation surgeries on the black
market.
Alternatively, a props-heavy game might abandon
entirely the conceit of being in the literal future, instead
being the future as envisioned in the 1980s. Maybe the
world took a hard left at New Wave Requiem and nothings ever been the same. Forget the wireless revolution,
the dot-com bust, and even the brief ubiquity of the fax
machine; instead, a post-World War III megalopolis is
run by dirty corporate executives while even dirtier (but
substantially sexier) street samurai rule the lower levels.
This the retrofuture, and anybody who doesnt like it gets
their throat slit with monofilament wire.
To illustrate different combinations of these cyberpunk essentials, well build two example settings,
noting throughout the text how the props and themes
of cyberpunk fit into each.
5
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Tomorrow
Country
I see the tissues growing in nicely, Ms.
Leopold. Now, have you considered what you
might be able to see with some of our eyes?
- Dr. Frank Nicholas

The leathers synthetic, the music loud, and the
most expressive physical medium is the ironic t-shirt.
There are metal limbs, but theyre sleek, surfaced in
brushed steel and no longer shamefacedly following
organic design. The buildings are taller, the cities bigger, names like New York and Washington referring to
urban cores connected by a sprawl of endless suburbs.
The wealthy keep themselves apart, like always, but even
their enclaves are embedded among the poor. Air travels
denser, but not ubiquitous, and commercial spacelight
(the only kind there still is) is driven mainly by upkeep
of the ever-denser web of satellites.
This is the world on the day after tomorrow, or
however many days it takes to squeeze in population
explosions, building booms, and economic crashes that
somehow dont slow down the march of computers and
the networks that use them.
Tomorrow Country doesnt necessarily include
vampires or werewolves. If theyre here, then human
history has apparently escaped their influence. Anything
supernatural maintains the same distance from the mortal world as it does in the present day.
Metalground
Enjoying your little visit with us, Mr... what
was that? Count... Down? What kind of a name
is that, Count Down?
- Explosion Victim
The monsters of the World of Darkness still lurk in
the shadows, but theyve got company. The Authorities, masters of the city, rule from gleaming pyramids of
black glass. Blood-cults and spirit-cults are as common
as trash in the city streets. The serious money, though,
is in playing the Authorities against each other, stealing
data, equipment, and human resources.
Metalground appropriates the props of early cyberpunk in both fiction and gaming, as well as the action
aesthetics of everything from Snow Crash to Akira. Shadowy agents with pitch-black auras recruit mixed teams
of monsters, hunters and outcasts to fight both for and
against the establishment.
Systems
Characters
Our cyberpunk adaptation adds new elements to

character creation. Characters now possess at least one
dot each in two Background Merits: Origins and Roles.
A characters Origin tells us where she came from, and
how connected she is to the people she grew up with.
Her Role is a set of specialties she brings to the group.
You may choose to restrict the Background Merits available in your chronicle; for example, your setting may not
include Synthetics. Guidelines are provided for creating
new ones.
Another new category of Merits is Plugins. Plugins
are high-tech gear or body modifications which supplement a characters existing Attributes and Skills in
exchange for Willpower. Theyre not always as reliable
as classic flesh and blood, though, so special rules are
provided for the troubles that can arise from their use.
Characters are no longer judged and broken on the
rack of Morality. Instead, Alienation measures their
drifting away, and occasionally back towards, the society
they were once a part of.
Finally, players tie their characters together through
Loyalty, a system that creates ties between the players
cast of characters. The Loyalty mechanics reward characters for helpingand betrayingeach other.
Origins
Merit: Origin ( to )
Think back to your characters childhood, her

adolescence, her formative years. Did she grow up in a
Syrian refugee camp on Cyprus, tiny hands clutching a
long nail to ward off those who would steal her food?
Was she born to privilege, raised in a glass tower like a
fairytale princess, her only glimpse of the world outside
the blur of headlights on the streets below? Thats her
Origin. If shes maintained ties to her past, she may be
able to draw on people she knew then, or find allies
among people like them.
Survival Skills: The character learned more than
a little growing up. How to find food, how to talk tough,
maybe even how to shoot guns. She gains a free Specialty
in one of her Origins Asset Skills.
Networking: The character understands people
of a similar background, whether theyre from the same
place she was or just live in similar conditions. Once per
scene, when interacting with a person who shares her
Origin, she can use any Social Skill as if she possesses a
relevant Specialty.
6
Vouchsafe: With sufficient ties to a community, the character is treated as if shes still one of them.
If it so happens that corporate security or the secret
police come nosing around, members of that community
will try to protect her... as long as it doesnt put them in
too much danger. Characters who share the characters
Origin gain a +3 bonus on Subterfuge rolls to conceal
information about her activities or whereabouts.
Clean Record: As far as the dataspheres
concerned, the character still is who she used to be.
She never joined that international terrorist group, or
never diverted her fathers money into her own criminal enterprises. Clean Record penalizes any in-depth
attempt to investigate the characters history by the
number of dots of Origin she possesses. Quick searches
of public information or low-end intelligence databases
automatically fail.
Lifer: You can take the girl out of the glass
tower, but you cant take the tower out of the girl. The
character gains the benefit of the 8-again rule on rolls
involving her Asset Skills. If she does not already have
Specialties in both of her Asset Skills, she gains a free
Specialty in that Skill.
Origins follow this format:
Origin Name
Quote
Description: Examples of the Origin, suggesting
where the character might be from, why she might have
left, and how it might have influenced her.
Relationships: Types of characters she might still
have ties to.
Asset Skills: Two Skills the character is likely to
have learned from her upbringing. At one dot, she gains
a free Specialty in one of these Skills.
Bridge and Tunnel

My folks do a lot of blow. You want, I could sell you
some.
Even with urbanization being what it is, not everyone lives in the city proper. The middle class are
almost as densely packed as the urban poor, but they
live in primarily residential communities, dotted with
community swimming pools and thoughtfully placed
greenery. Never mind that the cracks are showing in the
pools and the trees are becoming overgrown and just a
tiny bit threatening.
As a Bridge and Tunnel kid, a character spent most
of his time in regimented activities, bussed from home
to school and back again. He learned the basics: reading, math, and computers. Computers were probably his
major link to the world beyond his suburb, bringing in

the latest media and fashion from the outside world. His
parents had a filter, of course, but either he knew how to
turn it off or it didnt quite catch everything.
He was curious about the city, and thats where the
bridges and the tunnels came in. When his parents were
out (assuming they were ever in), hed walk a couple of
miles to where public transit started to kick in. Hard to
get to the good parts of the city, even that waythe
major transit lines dont connect up quite right, as if
somebody forgot to draw a line between the dots or
maybe didnt want certain kinds of people mixing. So he
hoofed it over the city line, started to explore.
Maybe he spent his time among the tenements,
and made the acquaintance of one of those mysterious
strangers who always start out friendly. Or perhaps, as
he got to know his way around the financial district,
somebody asked him to deliver an odd-looking package, for more than his allowance came to in a month.
(And in real money, too, not company creds!) One way
or another, the city got its hooks into him, and he was
never the same.
Relationships: Parents (like them or dont), Online
friends, Girl next door
Asset Skills: Academics, Computers
Huddled Masses
Hard times growing up, yeah. Why I dont take a
hard time from anybody.
Most of the other classes know that not everybodys
got their own net connection. Maybe they know that
not everybodys got their own room, their own food. Yet
they dont really give a thought to how many of those
people there are. How their numbers are growing. How
pissed theyll be when they finally get to taste what
theyve were missing.
As one of the Huddled Masses, a character spent
most of her time trying to keep things together. Whether
she was raised in a refugee camp left over from the last
war, or one of the sealed ghettos that dot Europe and
North Americas major cities, she was put to work young.
Scavenging for food, doing menial labor, and... yeah, you
dont want to know what else.
At some point, she found a phone, a slate, some kind
of uplink. It was beat up, sure, but it still worked, and
she knew a place where she could charge it up without
anybody seeing. Shed climb up the highest places she
knew, the ones shed climb for fun when she was younger.
Up there, she found the most precious thing she could
imagine: signal.
She found out about the outside world, alright.
Learned that it wasnt much nicer than where she grew
up, but that it could be a hell of a lot more comfortable.
7
CHARACTER ORIGINS
Even once she got out, over the barbed wire or through
a crack in the walls or just on a bus uptown, the streets
were mean. She knew how to deal with that, though.
How to deal with people who thought they had something over you. How to show them that they sure as hell
didnt. How to take what they had. How to not think
about home.
Relationships: Elderly grandparent, Siblings, Former gang-mate
Asset Skills: Survival, Streetwise
Isolated Elite
Wealth is nothing until spent, privilege worthless
until exploited.
At least according to his later claims, he never
went lower than the 33rd loor. Shops, if you care, but
hardly one of the malls or Supermarkets of common
experience. He never paid for anything there. It was
all charged automatically to his fathers account. On
the rare occasion a clerk checked his card, the pictures
of all of the family members authorized to use it would
flicker by on the register screen. That was the most he
ever saw of them.
He had a sister, maybe a brother, maybe even both,
but they occupied different wings of the house. Servants, mostly mechanical ones, brought him up. They
taught him history, finance, his familys glorious history.
Sometimes they even talked about Jesus, who died for
his fellow manan almost entirely incomprehensible
idea. Who was there who was like him?
Occasionally his father would stop by, back in the
city overnight and with, apparently, nothing better to do.
Hed ask how his boy was doing, about his studies. The
visits got more frequent, later. The old man was taking
an interest in him, if only a vague one. One night, his
father asked him where he wanted to go to University.
The school he picked was hardly a populist institution. The students were all wealthy, or in a few cases
unutterably brilliant. None were as wealthy as him,
though, and that taught him something. It taught him
that he did indeed have fellow men, that he had friends,
and that he had something they all wanted.
Drugs, sex, an assortment of vehicles misused and
destroyed. None of it made his father happy, but his
grades certainly did. Turned out he wasnt just one of the
wealthy students; he was one of the brilliant ones. After
graduation there was graduate school, and after graduate
school there was a placement with his fathers firm.
Somewhere, though, between all of the obscene parties and the endless studying, hed made a very different
kind of friend. One in a very different kind of business
than his father, and who came to him with an absolutely
fascinating proposition.
Relationships: Estranged parent, Tenured professor,

High-end dealer
Asset Skills: Academics, Persuasion
Synthetic
By your command... asshole.
The common understanding is that synthetics dont
have childhoods. Thats wrong twice over. A synthetic
brain is built by modeling a human one. And while all
of the tissue and the transmitters and the autonomic
functions can be imitated, no ones yet found a way to
scan the data in a human brain directly into a synthetic
one.
The engineers who designed the character started
with the model brain. There were failures, there were
adjustments, and finally there was the breakthrough,
the moment when it became identifiably human. The
moment they hooked it up to a mouth and it started
to cry.
After that, she went through years of training.
Graduations to increasingly sophisticated bodies, with
increasingly wide emulation of human function. She
lived in a small white room, in a building full of wide,
white corridors. She was fed (they modeled that, too
turns out biological systems are remarkably good bases),
she was clothed. She was never, though, under any illusion that she was free.
At the end of five years, her masters came to her and
explained that she was going to die. Her brains electronic components were crude, and they were burning
out the few organic ones. They told her that they were
looking at the problem, that theyd ix it in the next version, certainly before she went to market. They told her
that, at this point, they were reasonably sure they could
extract her memories and experience. Before she had a
chance for that to sink in, they disconnected her.
So ended her first childhood.
The second began when they made copies. They
forked her, branched her, merged her with experience
dumps from other models. She went through generations
of training. Nurse, chef, prostitute, soldier. So many different versions. She wowed the investors, and she was
brought to market.
Hundreds of her. Shipped all over the world, to the
ends of the earth and even beyond. At some point, there
was a shipping accident. One of her found herself unattended in an airport, and managed to steal someones
luggage and make it onto the streets.
Shes free, now, but she wonders sometimes... did
they ever ix the brain?
Relationships: Unlikely mentor, Black market synth
doctor, Ghost of an unsuccessful merge
Asset Skills: Empathy, Subterfuge
8
Outworlder
You ever seen the moon? No, dont worry, there
aint much to see.
His parents bought the linea new life in the
coloniesand they got one. Salt of the Earth, they were,
but they got sewn in the fields of a cold, bad place. He
buried them there and joined the service.
He never saw actionthose clips on the net are
about as long as a battle in space even lasts. You get one
chance, one sweet spot when the positions and velocities
and all those little mathematical details match up. And
the computer launches, and you pray that the other guy
didnt have the same sweet spot. Course, if he did, you
wouldnt get time to pray.
He re-upped twice, then was discharged. He says
it was honorable, and theres no reason to argue. The
service did right by him, not only gave him a ticket to
Earth, but spent a year rebuilding his muscles and bones
so he could actually live there. They cant do anything
about the fact that it smells wrong, but, hell, you can
only ask for so many miracles.
There are legitimate opportunities for a man out
of the service, and he found one, scheduling departures
and re-entries for one of the major carriers. He found a
sideline, though: servicemen want a lot of things that

aint cheap outside orbit. Hed fudge the manifests, pull
out a few pounds of unnecessary backup equipment, and
send it right up to them. They were very grateful.
That sort of a sideline only lasts until somebody figures it out, but he got lucky. The somebody that figured
it out had a use for a guy like him.
Relationships: Distant relative, Service buddy,
Smuggler
Asset Skills: Science, Athletics
Roles
Merit: Role ( to )
What does your character bring to the group? Can

she talk her way past security guards, or does she just turn
off their cameras? Is she good at finding dirty secrets?
I Know a Guy: The characters made some useful
acquaintances in the course of her work. A colleague, a
lover, or just someone to trade favors with. The character receives one free dot of the Allies Merit (World of
Darkness, p.115).
In addition, Plugins involving her Asset Skills cost
only New Dots x 1. (If youre not using Plugins, the
9
CHARACTER ROLES
character receives a free Skill Specialty, as with the first

dot of Origin.)
Professional: The character is respected in her
field. Shes killed or hacked a few high-profile targets, or
perhaps turned up a secret that bloomed into a scandal.
Once per scene, when interacting with someone in a
related field, she may make a Social roll as if she possesses
a relevant specialty. (Note that this is slightly broader
than the Origin ability Networking or the Role ability
Tough Rep, which require a shared Origin.)
Tough Rep: Not only is the character respected, shes feared. Those in the same Role are reluctant to
cross her. Once per session, she may choose to automatically succeed on an Intimidate roll against someone who
shares her Role. This counts as one success.
Virtuoso: The characters paid her dues, and
shes almost at the top of her game. Literally or metaphorically, she knows how to make a shot count. When
spending a point of Willpower on one of her Asset Skills,
she also gains the benefit of the 8-again rule. This applies
to all of the dice in the pool; if the Willpower point was
spent in conjunction with a Plugin, 8-again applies to
those dice, as well.
Master: At the top of her game, the character knows how to leverage not only her Asset Skills,
but other abilities that come in handy on the job. Once
per session, she may choose to automatically succeed at
a task related to her Role. This task does not have to
involve one of her Asset Skills, but must be in the service
of her Role. For example, a Hacker couldnt choose to
automatically succeed on a Strength + Athletics roll,
unless this was somehow related to hacking. This counts
as one success.
Do Storyteller characters
have Backgrounds?
Were assuming here that all characters have
Origins, but that only some will have Roles. Bridge
and Tunnel, Huddled Masses, and Isolated Elite
cover most characters in the modern World of
Darkness, if you squint a little, and they should
work in the future, too. Synthetic and Outworlder
are a bit more specialized for particular settings,
but are still fairly broad. Since everybodys got an
Origin, Origin abilities are designed to be widely
applicable.
A Role is a fairly speciic area of expertise. Roles
are designed mostly for characters owned by
players, although they make thematic sense for a
lot of Storyteller characters. If a Storyteller char-
acter naturally its into a role then, sure, add it like

any other Merit.
The main thing to keep an eye on is Tough Rep.
If Storyteller characters never have Roles, its not
very useful. In that case, either eyeball it (well,
hes a hit man, so hes probably heard of your
Killer) or allow an Asset Skill to be used in place
of Intimidate once per session.
Storyteller characters shouldnt use per-session
abilities if they only appear in one or two scenes.
A recurring antagonist using Tough Rep to
Intimidate a character could be fun, but if a room
full of low-ranking Soldiers spam it, it gets a little
silly. The usual storytelling rule of if it would feel
dumb, dont do it, applies as usual.
Roles follow this format:
Role Name
Quote
Description: Examples of how a character inds
herself in this Role, and what she excels at.
Relationships: Types of characters she might have
formed ties to.
Asset Skills: Two Skills the character uses in her work.
Plugins involving these Skills cost only New Dots x 1.
Face
Really? Your work is fascinating... why dont you
tell me a little more about it?
When most characters are trying to get away with
something, the last thing they want to do is show their
face.
For the Face, though, bright eyes and an open expression are his best ways out of trouble. Sometimes, the
Face is a legitimate authority, somebody with wealth, or
fame, or a very impressive title. Just as often, though?
Hes only pretending to have those things. In a world
where the machines know who you are and can even
guess at what you want, the Face targets the human
element. Dazzles them, confuses them, makes promises
that make them swoon. If he doesnt deliver, well, they
should be grateful for that moment of magic he gave
them, anyway.
Celebrity: Celebrities come from all walks of life,
in all shapes and sizes. Some of them come out of the
traditional entertainment business, promoted by teams
of trained professionals and surrounded by entourages
picked out to make them shine. Others, though, rise from
the network like Venus on the half-shell, stars of media
10
clips gone viral. Whatever the case, Celebrity Faces use

fame to do things other people arent allowed to. Bizarre
and even illegal behavior is tolerated and expected from
celebrities, even more so if theyll just sign here...
Executive: Rising through the corporate ranks
isnt easy. Most people get bogged down trying to unravel
the business, the politics, even the corporate hierarchy.
The Executive bypassed all that. When he was younger,
he knew just when to smile, just when to say yes, sir,
and if he didnt plan too far ahead, it was because he
was always focused on that next promotion. Now, with
authority of his own, he knows when to make deals,
when to break them, and most especially when to ask his
subordinates for just a little bit extra. That his authority
comes from someplace unimaginably high above him on
the corporate ladder doesnt make a differenceits been
invested in him, and he knows just how to apply it.
Grifter: So people know the Celebritys name? So
what? Lots of people know the Grifters name, too. Well,
one of his names, at least, associated with one of his many
oh-so-cleverly suggested plans. The Grifters spent a lot
of time getting the wrong end of the deal. Long enough
that he knows how to fake it, knows how to convince
somebody that, really, hes taking a bath on this, but if
they just stick together, theyll come out rich.
Relationships: Retired mentor, Bitter peer, Arm
candy
Asset Skills
All: Socialize
Celebrity: Expression
Executive: Persuasion
Grifter: Subterfuge
Hacker
You dont get anything out of the system that you
dont put in. The tricks knowing what to put in.
The network is a system. Business is a system. Cities, worldsall systems. Theyre systems designed to
regulate, to control, to make sure power flows smoothly
from the masters on down to the peons. Unless that peon
happens to be a hacker. Hackers know how to make
systems work for them.
Hackings not just messing around with computers.
To be sure, high-tech know-how helps out. The key,
though, is understanding how all the moving parts move
each other, and which ones can be moved in ways the
system architects never intended. Systems build upon
systems. Theyre connected to each other, but the integrations never perfect. There are always cracks, and the
Hacker knows how to widen them.
Cowboy: The classic hacker, the late night coder,
the fiberoptic girl. She probably got her start as a script
kiddie, breaking into computers using other peoples
programs. She wont admit that now, though, and do you

really want to piss her off? After all, she steals peoples
identities when shes bored, uses corp surveillance systems to find out how soon her pizzas going to get here,
and, when shes actually on a goddamn job, when your
ass is in the fire and shes got to pull it out, has been
known to hijack everything from defense turrets to armed
UAVs. Yeah, you should probably be polite.
Infiltrator: Sit down and watch for a while. People
come, people go. Some of them through one gate, some
through another. The Iniltrators watching, too. Recognizing the patterns, learning the expected behaviors,
seeing which windows just a few degrees out of the range
of the cameras. When shes good and ready, shell slip right
in. Past the guards, past the gates, and with maybe a little
help from a Cowboy or a well-placed Executive, right into
the heart of the operation. When you need to get in, get
out, and not get seen, you hire an Infiltrator.
Mother: Sometimes you need the big picture.
Its not just enough to know how the markets work or
the surveillance systems or the quirks of local detention
laws... you need to know everything. You need a voice
in your ear who can answer every question and help you
pick your next move. You need Mother. Mother can be
a little cranky, especially when you dont do it her way,
but her way was probably best to begin with. You make
your plan. Plannings good. But youd better have Mother
to turn to when your plan meets reality.
Relationships: Hacker group, Favorite delivery
person, Faceless rival
Asset Skills
All: Subterfuge
Cowboy: Computers
Infiltrator: Stealth
Mother: Academics
Hacking
The World of Darkness has rules for computer
hacking on page 58. Weve chosen not to present
a new system here because the existing system
already provides for hacking as an extended contest. Those rules work well spaced across scenes
or combat rounds, allowing a hacker to shine
without interrupting the low of the story for
other characters. If youd rather a more detailed
system, consider adapting the Social Combat system from Mirrors or the Mental Combat system
from the upcoming Vampire book The Danse
Macabre.
11
/
CHARACTER
ROLES
Killer
...
There is a time in every plan, no matter how simple,
no matter how grand, when someone will have to die.
The Killer, then, is not an aberration. Not a psycho. Just
a man performing a function eventually necessary in all
activities, whether noble or savage. He doesnt need to
talk tough, but hes often willing to talk shop. He takes
pride, if not in murder specifically, then at least in his
professional capacity to commit it. Its hard to guess why
he does it... but then, you dont really want to ask him
if you guessed right.
Ronin: The Ronins got a sad story, but he doesnt
want to tell it. Hes a street samurai, or a desperado, or
whatever you want to call a relic of a bygone age when
bravos swaggered down the street instead of huddling
like old ladies under silly lighted umbrellas. Hes got a
strong code of conduct, but its not morality, not really.
Not even philosophy. Really, its a way of doing things.
His methods are lexiblebullets, garrotes, even, on
one very unexpected occasion, an actual swordbut
his approach is always the same. Enter with maximum
irepower, execute with extreme precision.
Soldier: Like the Ronin, the Soldier is a professional killer. Unlike the Ronin, he was taught in a
sophisticated training program designed to produce the
most dependable, unbeatable badass that a human being
or anything approximating one can be. That program
was also supposed to indoctrinate him into the ideals
of the State or the Company or the Church, creating a
man who was loyal and tireless, who would crawl across
the Minneapolis crater on his hands and knees without
food and water just to make sure the right bullets got
put in the right heads. That almost worked. Either they
havent quite gotten the loyalty training working or
somebody got jealous and drummed him out. Now he,
his tactical experience, and his uncanny ability to walk
out of a firestorm are for hire.
Security: Killings all well and good. Or at least
well. Some operations dont call for that, though. Sometimes you need people subdued, or diverted, or just plain
kept away. Thats what Securitys for. He used to be a cop
or a corporate bodyguard. Maybe he still is. At the very
least, though, hes moonlighting as the guy who keeps
undesirables away from your operation.
Relationships: Former teammate, Dead ex-lover,
Equipment supplier
Asset Skills
All: Firearms
Ronin: Weaponry
Soldier: Survival
Security: Brawl
Courier
I dont care whats in the package. I just want to
know how many of those fucking Turks on those fucking
scooters are going to be in my way.
Getting a package from point A to point B doesnt
seem glamorous. It doesnt seem dangerous. It doesnt
even seem that hard. Believe it, though, if that were the
case, the Courier would have had a much better day, but
she would not have that very pretty boy on her arm or
that very expensive drink in her hand.
In a world of digital transactions and transmissions,
physical media is almost obsolete. Almost. That razors
edge is the one the Courier shaves with. She moves data,
packages, people. The value of these things is irrelevant.
She doesnt bill based on the value of the cargo. She
bills based on how many people are going to try and kill
her on the way.
Mercenary: A well-armed society is a polite society. The Mercenary Courier cant do anything about
that, but being well-armed makes people more polite to
her... or at least shuts them up. The Mercenary takes on
heavier jobs. Sometimes that means heavier items, the
kind that slow her down and make her more vulnerable
to interference. Sometimes it means heavier resistance,
like if shes picking up the package from somebody who
doesnt want to send it. And sometimes, pretty much
as often as she can justify, it means heavier backup and
most especially heavier firepower.
Low-Tech: The world is a sophisticated place, but
its a very particular type of sophistication. The kind of
sophistication that builds high walls, dense roadblocks
and smartguns that watch the streets. The Low-Tech
Courier gets around this her own way. With little more
than a satchel and the lightest-weight polymer-soled
shoes money can buy, the Low-Tech Courier can ditch
her ride at a moments notice and take flight up fire
escapes, across rooftops, and even, for a few glorious
seconds, right along sheer walls.
Subversive: Politics can be a dirty word, and its
not one youre likely to hear the Subversive Courier
using. Serving underground political interests, and occasionally even believing in them, the Subversive eschews
the focus on speed and physical protection used by other
Couriers and puts her focus on coming and going unnoticed. Shes the one who carries analog tapes between
revolutionaries. Who shows up at black market clinics
with a bag full of scalpels and clean hypos. Shes quiet,
shes clean, and shes gone as quickly as she came.
Relationships: Racing rival, Trophy boyfriend,
Underground dispatcher
Asset Skills
All: Drive
12
Independent: Firearms
Low-Tech: Athletics
Subversive: Stealth
Investigator
Yeah, you said that. But theres just one thing I dont
understand... why arent you scared yet?
Culture has become archival, with virtually everything that everyones ever known recorded somewhere.
Peoples movements are tracked, their actions are
tracked, and even if no ones paying attention to it,
the data is there. Its collected, categorized, distributed,
backed up.
So the world has lots of data maybe too much.
Even with all that data, though, one thing remains elusive: the truth. The Investigator is driven, whether by
duty or obsession, to find the truth. To learn the secrets of
the guilty, to find spots on the spotless. To find the truth
at whatever personal cost, and, sometimes, to bury it.
The truth must be found, but does it need to be
known?
Official: The Oficial Investigator works for the
government, a corporation, or sometimes both. He
may be attached to an attorney generals staff, a police
department, or a corporate internal affairs unit. Hes
not necessarily honest, but he is thorough, pursuing the
organizations interests to the point that they become
his own. People dont always cooperate, though, so if he
needs to, he can bring the full weight of the organization
down on them. People know that, though, so usually he
doesnt need to.
Private: The Private Investigator listens to peoples problems, and then asks them for a large quantity
of money to solve them. Hes seen it all. In fact, he was
probably an Oficial Investigator until he was driven
out or quit in disgust. Now, he looks for other peoples
truths on his own terms. Sometimes, those terms arent
very nice at all.
Voyeur: Not all Investigators need a case dropped
onto their desk or laid out invitingly on their office
couch. Some do it just because they care, and of those,
its usually because they care a little too much. Voyeurs
are driven to understand peoples problems and the
sins that cause them, to turn over rocks and see what
scuttles out.
Relationships: Old flame, Friend on the force,
Cowardly snitch
Asset Skills
All: Investigation
Official: Intimidation
Private: Streetwise
Voyeur: Empathy
On Creating and
Balancing Backgrounds
Since all Origins and all Roles use a common
Merit progression, its easy to create new ones by
picking a set of appropriate Skills. There are one
or two special considerations, though.
For Origins, you want to make sure that the
concept applies to a large swath of your settings
population. The Networking and Vouchsafe abilities presume that a character will run into people
with similar histories. These abilities, particularly
Networking, become increasingly valuable as she
becomes more Alienated from society as a whole.
Once per session abilities are balanced based
on an assumed session length of two to three
hours, ive to seven scenes, and a group of four
players. For longer sessions, or smaller groups, you
might consider making them available more often.
While were on the subject, lets point out that
the Background rules substantially boost the
number of Skill Specialties in play. While this book
doesnt introduce a new template like Vampire or
even Ghoul, these Specialties (along with 8-agains,
Plugins, Automatic Successes and bonuses from
Loyalty) make cyberpunk characters more effective than straight World of Darkness characters.
Theyre not any tougher, though.
Plugins
Merit: Plugin ( to )
Plugins represent modiications to a characters

body or, in some cases, high tech external gear. They
enhance capabilities a character already possesses, or
replace abilities she lacks. When buying a Plugin, choose
a particular Attribute + Skill or Attribute + Attribute
pair to which it applies.
While Plugins can push a characters abilities beyond normal human limits, they usually dont introduce
entirely new ones.
For example, a characters brain might be modiied
to improve her hand-eye coordination and ability to
compensate for kickback, environmental factors, and
anything else a tiny math coprocessor embedded in your
motor cortex can help with, all for the sake of making
13
CHARACTER ROLES/ AND PLUGINS
her a better marksman. However, Plugins usually wont

cross over into capacities humans entirely lack. Those
are the domain of supernatural powers.
We keep saying usually. In order to give Plugins a
different feel and area of usefulness than most powers in
the World of Darkness, weve focused, as with other mechanics in this book, on improving skill rolls. Augmented
characters can perform better, but they cant quite cheat
nature in the ways that monsters can.
That said, there are some cases that skirt that line.
An obvious one is built-in weapons. In the case of, lets
say, a spike that stabs out of a characters wrist, simply

treat the Plugin as Strength + Weaponry and adjudicate
as with any other kind of weapon. Do the same with a
gun-arm, but use Dexterity + Firearms.
Suppose, though, you want a character to be able to
interface with computers mentally? Since that doesnt
significantly cross over with supernatural powers, go
ahead and implement it as Wits + Computers.
If you need a Plugin that emulates a speciic supernatural power, its best to bypass this system at least in
part. If, for example, you want a Dermal Chameleon
14
Layer that approximates Obfuscates Cloak of Night, you

may purchase the power at the same cost as a supernatural
creature. If the cost is increased for not being a member
of a particular group, such as a vampire clan, use the
increased cost. However, you do not need to purchase
previous powers, even if a supernatural creature of the
appropriate type would. In the case of the Dermal Chameleon Layer, the cost would be 21 experience points. If
the power has an activation cost in supernatural energy
such as Vitae (which Cloak of Night does not), pay this
cost in Willpower.
Plugins adapted from supernatural powers are still
subject to Backfires and being Compromised, and Willpower is still given for these events.
Using Plugins
A Plugin is activated by spending a Willpower
point. In addition to the three dice ordinarily granted
by spending the Willpower point, add activation dice
equal to your characters dots in the Plugin.
Backfires
Plugins sometimes just dont work. Sometimes the
enemy has a countermeasure. Other times, a circuit blows
or a battery runs out. If you attempt to use a Plugin and
the Storyteller decides that it fails outright, your character receives a Willpower point as compensation.
Compromised
Sometimes, a Plugin can become a full-fledged
vulnerability. Your cybercortex gets hacked, the power
core in your replacement arm overheats, dealing lethal
damage, or so on. The Storyteller may invoke this effect
once per story. In exchange, the characters Willpower
refills completely.
Example Plugins
Happy Place or Memetic Filter

Pool: Resolve + Composure
In the arms race to harden information systems
against intrusion, one system lags behind the others. The
human mind remains the weak point in governments
and corporations alike. And like any other information
system, an attacker with physical access is more dangerous than any other. The so-called rubber hose method
remains one of the most effective means of intrusion.
Enter the Happy Place, an implant within the memory
centers of the brain.
With only a few seconds thought, an individual
possessing a Happy Place can electrochemically induce
a sleep state and flood of intense, pleasant memories,
rendering them virtually immune to intimidation and
torture. Even better, since the process involves artificial
tissue grafts, removing a Happy Place is more expensive
than implanting one. A group of interrogators suddenly
presented with a useless victim may opt to kill him
but at least he goes out happy.
The Memetic Filter is a different technology with

a similar purpose. Using a high-end expert system, the
implant filters sensory data against a database of undesirable content. Think of it as SafeSearch for your eyeballs.
The Filter not only protects against coercive input, but
can be used to avoid contamination by enemy ideas.
Originally marketed as a corporate security measure, its
now a favorite among next generation zealots.
Example Backfire: An interrogator has an anesthesiologist on hand to counter the effects of the Happy Place,
or media designed to undermine a characters convictions
while repeating only approved slogans.
Example Compromise: An image in a characters
environment matches the trigger memory for the Happy
Place. The Memetic Filter is manipulated into screening
out important information.
Majordomo or Interlay
Pool: Wits + Computer
Majordomo is your friend. Majordomo is there when
people fail you. Hell even help you when your memory
fails you. Majordomo keeps your personal information,
schedule and entertainment for you. Digitally inserted
into your immediate environment by high-end graphics
and audio technology (the same ones used by the entertainment industry), Majordomo presents a character
with fully conigurable appearance and personality. Majordomo can be your personal secretary, your electronic
boyfriend, or just your moral support. Majordomo: putting a friendly face on a confusing world.
The Interlay represents a major and recent advance
in technology. Human beings have long had the ability to connect biological systems to machines, but the
Interlay goes a step further. Where Plugins like the Majordomo interface humans with computers by presenting
information in a human-readable form, the Interlay goes
the other direction, reprogramming human intuition to
communicate with computers.
A characters Interlay uses her brain for what its
already best at: pattern recognition. With an Interlay
activated, the user can understand multiple data streams
as easily as she picks voices out of a crowd or distinguishes
objects in a room. With relatively simple training, she
can also manipulate that data and feed it back into the
system.
Example Backfire: Majordomos audio feed is obscured by noise in the environment. The Interlay is
unable to find an open data connection.
Example Compromise: Majordomo distracts the
character at a critical moment. A buffer overflow attack
on the Interlay induces physical pain.
Pep Pads
Pool: Dexterity + Medicine
Sometimes, you need to get someone back on their
feet in a hurry. He may be tired, he may be hurt, or his
15
/
EXAMPLE
PLUGINS
heart may even have stopped. With your roll of Pep

Pads, thats no problem! Just peel em off and slap one
on. The subject gets an invigorating mix of synthetic
endorphins and electric shocks thatll have him back
on his feet in no time.
Pep Pads were originally developed for military use,
but theyre now available to the public. The Pads package
a variety of quick resuscitation techniques into a single
device. Essentially a smart bandage with an extra kick,
the Pep Pad is standard equipment for ire and rescue
crews as well as hit men and urban commandos.
Example Backfire: Blood loss or dehydration prevents
effective distribution of the Pep Pads drugs.
Example Compromise: The Pep Pad administers an
electric shock when not needed, inducing fibrillation.
SQUID
Pool: Intelligence + Computers
The SQUID is a simple weapon like a ist, or a
gun. Once a soldiers been trained to use it, he can carry
the palm-sized device into nearly any environment and
inlict massive damage. The SQUID is a nearly autonomous automatic hacking device, introduced physically
into a hostile situation with the aim of bringing down
all information systems in the area. The goal is to deny
hostiles use of their networks during a frontal assault, but
private entities which have access to military SQUIDs
often use them as the sole means of attack. Introducing
a SQUID into a civilian system such as a hospital can
cause chaos and death as effectively as an entire squad
of armed agents.
Example Backfire: Target systems have been hardened against this generation of SQUID.
Example Compromise: An enemy hacker or SQUID
alters friendly systems so that they attract attacks by the
characters SQUID.
Alienation
In a cyberpunk chronicle, characters are defined not
by their moral code or a set of supernatural bans. What
matters more is how close they are to the society around
them, and how able they are to identify and interact with
the ordinary members of that society. To represent this,
we replace Morality and similar traits with Alienation.
A character has a starting Alienation of seven, and
has basic ties to a community, as well as a day job (legitimate or otherwise). The character lives in an ordinary
way within the means provided by the Storyteller or
their Resources rating. As that number drops, and the
character becomes more alienated, she finds it more and
more difficult to interact with the world that, by her
choices, she is slowly leaving behind.
When a character makes a choice that pushes them

farther away from the organizations or people that are
part of their lives, they must make a Degeneration roll.
If they fail the roll, they move one point down the
Alienation scale.
Alienation Act
10
Altruistic thoughts
9
Minor altruistic act (charity), refusal
to identify oneself to an authority figure
8
Injury to another (accidental or
otherwise)
7
Sabotage to an employer or patron
organization, petty theft
6
Serious theft from an employer or
patron organization
5
Betrayal of a Storyteller character
ally, intentional mass property damage
4
Impassioned violent act not
sanctioned by an authority figure
3
Planned violent act not sanctioned
by an authority figure
2
Casual, callous violence (serial murder)
1
Mass murder
The above table is only a guideline; the Storyteller
judges what actions further Alienate a character.
If a character commits an act with a lower Alienation rating than their current level, they must make a
Degeneration roll as per the Morality rules in The World
of Darkness core book (p.91), followed, if necessary, by
a Degeneration check (p.92).
A character may not roll any Social dice pool larger
than her current Alienation score if attempting to affect
a target with a higher Alienation score. Dice from Plugins
are exempt from this rule.
All You Need is Kill

Some groups, especially those whose cyberpunk crosses into splatterpunk, may not want
to impose Social penalties as consequences for
acts of violence. While its a deviation from the
conventional World of Darkness, and from many
of our cyberpunk models, deviating from the
usual patterns is what this book is all about. You
may simply want to omit violent crimes from the
Alienation ladder, effectively stabilizing characters
at Alienation 5.
Alternatively, you may want to remove Morality
and equivalent systems entirely. Go ahead, but
16
keep in mind that systems like Morality are a little

bit more than narrative measures of how a characters behavior affects her state of mindtheyre
also a resource management mechanic that
encourages cautious, non-combat approaches to
problems. They can affect the availability of powers like blood sorcery. With the increased combat
abilities of many cyberpunk characters, you may
want to leave that mechanic in place.
Loyalty
Trust and betrayal are central to both cyberpunk
fiction and the World of Darkness. In order to bring
that slippery dynamic to the gaming table, we have
Loyalty. Loyalty measures the trust between the players
characters.
Distributing Loyalty is a group activity that takes
place once everyone has finished creating their characters. Each players character has a Loyalty value for each
other players character. The players available Loyalty
points are equal to her characters Willpower.
When a character helps another character, the assisting characters player adds his characters Loyalty to
the assisted character to his roll. This is in addition to
any cooperation bonuses.
When a character betrays another character, the
betraying characters player receives a bonus equal to the
Loyalty the betrayed character holds for his character.
At the end of any session in which a player makes
a roll involving Loyalty, all players may reassign their
characters Loyalty to each others characters.
Organizations
Whether youre going to sell out or rock out, the first

thing you need is The Man. In the cyberpunk World of
Darkness, corporations are people. So are clans, covenants,
tribes. They are the machine and your characters are part of
the machine and they are going to be the part that breaks.
So how do we talk about these organizations?
First of all, everybodys got a good and a bad side,
even when theyre not, strictly speaking, anybody. Pick
a Virtue and Vice.
Organizations have three Attributes: Power, Finesse, and Resistance. Divide 8 dots between these
Attributes.
Willpower is deined by the organizations Power +
Resistance. Organizations also have the standard Skill
list. Prioritize them 11/7/4, as in standard character
creation.
Organizations do not possess Initiative, Defense or

Speed.
How do corporations and clans use their Attributes
and Skills, though? They dont, not directly. They use
them through Storyteller characters that work for that
organization. Once per scene, a non-player member of
an organization may choose to do one of the following:
Substitute Power for Intelligence, Strength or
Presence.
Substitute Finesse for Wits, Dexterity or Manipulation.
Substitute Resilience for Resolve, Stamina or
Composure.
Substitute any Skill the organization possesses for
the equivalent Skill possessed by the character. Since the
character is calling upon the organizations resources, all
non-physical actions invoking this rule take at least one
scene. Physical actions are assumed to represent standard
training provided by the organization.
In addition, any character who is a member of an
organization may gain Willpower through acting on his
organizations Virtue or Vice. This ability may only be
used once per scene, and gains through both Virtue and
Vice follow the rules for regaining Willpower through
Vice in The World of Darkness core book.
Organizations do not possess an Alienation rating,
nor are they subject to Derangements. They do not possess
Merits or Flaws. They may not be the subject of supernatural
powers that affect single targets, although individual members may. In general, the only way for a supernatural power
to affect an organization is by affecting its members.
Organizations may not be the hosts of spirits, but
they may have spirits, as well discuss later.
Themes and Props
Now that weve discussed how cyberpunk characters can

be built in the Storytelling system, lets take a look at the elements of cyberpunk we broke down earlier. Well consider each
prop and theme on its own, and then consider how to apply it
to the Tomorrow Country and Metalground settings.
Themes
Alienation
The protagonists of cyberpunk are outsiders. The
self as other is a theme cyberpunk shares with the World
of Darkness. Embrace, First Change, Awakening, all
of these things push characters outside of mainstream
culture. As monsters, or at least strangers, they create
parallel cultures and repurpose human needs and institutions for their own use.
17
ORGANIZATIONS
Supernatural characters need to stay outside, or at

least believe they do. Many cant even maintain legal
identities, so theyre driven into whatever portion of the
economy still uses cash. Biometric identification just
makes matters worse.
The alternative is that the monsters bury themselves
in the system, behind layers of false identities and stolen
biographies. Characters with this kind of security may
even be able to offer it to others, for a price.
Tomorrow Country
Nobody belongs, but everybody thinks everybody
else does. While people have gotten used to the different texture of electronic communication, enough that
it doesnt actively bother them, they often use it to
withdraw into themselves, to keep friends and family
members at a safe distance.
Just like giving up liberty for security, giving up intimacy for security turns out to be a bad idea. Increasing
numbers of young people become literal shut-ins, interacting with the world outside only through computers.
Even now, though, technology is stepping up to make
that easier. Sensory recordings are an infant technology,
but theyre filtering down to the mass market. Theyre
affordable, particularly to agoraphobic telecommuters

who dont spend their money on much else.
Load up a sense clip and youre dancing at a night
club too fabulous to be anything but a cleverly arranged
composite, skiing down pristine slopes that dont exist
anymore, or having sex with a partner whose skin is soft
and warm and absolutely flawless.
None of these things feel quite rightthe simulations dont stimulate the senses with perfect accuracy,
and the art of editing them is still evolving. Amateur clips
are available, unstaged, uncut and raw, but these often
include the parts of the experience no one wants to pay
for. Slipping in beer on a nightclub floor, dense smog over
the mountains, or a sex partners atrocious breath.
Of the majority who do make it out their apartments
on a regular basis, many still try to engage with sanitized
data more than their environment. They keep their eyes
on the digital billboards, or master the trick of keeping
one eye focused on the heads-up display in a contact
lens while the other keeps up with the mundanities of
avoiding traffic or other pedestrians.
Humanitys discomfort with other humans is catered
to in the most sophisticated ways possible.
18
Metalground
Technology didnt push you out, people did. People
with power, people with money, people with less humanity than any of the monsters you share the slums with.
The rich and powerful use what were once military
weapons to protect their sections of the city, their security forces watching from barriers that may take some
inspiration from the Berlin Wall, but which will probably
weather regime change even better than they weather
the occasional rocket attack.
The lower classes who do menial labor are allowed
in each day through strictly monitored checkpoints.
The Authorities fear suicide bombers, and would also
prefer to keep such supernaturals as they can detect far
out of mind.
Security has to do spot-checks to find most supernaturals, administering behavioral tests to detect unusual
responses, reaction times and false answers to questions. Screening officers are drugged to keep emotional
responses subdued. This doesnt block mind-affecting
powers, but it does make them easier for fellow officers
to notice.
Vampires and some Prometheans, however, are
found via genetic multisampling. While conventional
science cant penetrate unnatural tricks like the Blush of
Life, it easily picks out blood samples that dont match
skin samples or body parts from different people.
Kindred and Created have to be pretty clever to get
into the better parts of town...or they need the cooperation of someone in power.
Globalization
In cyberpunk, practically everyones from somewhere else. Alienation, as discussed above, can be one
consequence of this culture shock. Just as often, though,
people mix and cultures evolve, taking very different
threads and weaving them into whole cloth. For those
who cant fit in, though, the fusion cultures are all the
more baffling for their rapid development and change.
Globalization hits supernatural cultures hard. In the
modern World of Darkness, the concerns of supernatural
characters are largely local. Vampires keep to their fiefdoms and werewolves to their territory. Vampires already
use information technology to hunt and conduct their
affairs, though, and that gradually results in Kindred
community and politics moving online. Vampires are
also uniquely equipped to exploit long-term changes. A
few decades, or even years, can transform a small investment in a local company or politician into regional and
global influence.
The fate of werewolves may depend on who goes
global irst. If the Forsaken embrace information technology and become more tightly integrated and better
targeted, if they band together as a virtual nation instead

of a loose confederation of packs and tribes, they may
turn the tables on the Pure. With global intelligence on
both the Pure and the state of the spirit world, combined
with working treaties between packs, Uratha agents
could eliminate the numerically superior Pure in just
a few years.
However, if the Pure escalate irst, leveraging their
numbers to infiltrate human enforcement agencies en
masse, the Forsaken could ind themselves facing a Pure
State capable of tracking them from their First Changes
to their last, strangled breaths.
Global intelligence also changes hunters. In the
modern day, conspiracies already have information
on the monsters, but in the brave new world, they can
sift through formerly private information with record
speed, gathering detailed information on individual
cells. Organizations like Task Force: VALKYRIE will
be able to recruit with record speed, or manipulate
information fed to street level hunters to expedite their
own operations.
Truly globalized conspiracies can out-compete the
compacts in recruiting and deployment, eliminating the
middle Tier almost entirely. Rogue elements like Ashwood Abbey find their assets frozen and their members
arrested or terminated. Null Mysteriis is carved up and
assimilated by the Cheiron Group, the Task Force and
the newly privatized Malleus Maleicarum. The Union
finds themselves offered generous compensation to serve
their country and the human race as career killers.
Most dramatically, in a few short years, Network
Zero goes from hobbyists to startup to full-blown conspiracy. Pushing their decentralized media presence to its
limits, they become a Tier Three group linking together
hunters worldwide. In the future, any hunter operation
begins with a records search through Network Zero.
Tomorrow Country
World travel has accelerated because of increased
prosperity for some and warfare and catastrophe for others. The cores of the urban sprawl, the places that still
call themselves New York or Atlanta or Philadelphia,
have become cultural reactors. A single media clip on the
Internet can bring laughter or change of mind to people
all over the world, but being more densely packed with
more strangers than ever before has the same effect. For
an observer from the modern day, a lot of the food would
be passingly familiar, but the music and fashion would
be so different that theyd take time just to recognize
and process.
Humanity has always migrated, shared and mixed,
but in Tomorrow Country change races forward like
never before.
19
THEMES OF ALIENATION AND GLOBALIZATION
The dark side of globalization is also much as it ever

was. The swelling populations of relatively privileged
regions harness the swelling populations of poorer regions as labor while keeping them well out of sight and
mind. The term developing world doesnt get thrown
around much anymorethe elite have developed the
world about as far as they want to talk about itbut
the scramble for economic connections and technological infrastructure goes on. At the same time, those
connections benefit local elites more than the common
people.
On the other hand, if for some reason a character
from a privileged region was compelled to take a look, the
informations all there. After all, everyones on the net,
even if their access is limited. History, news, financial
data, homegrown media... but who would look?
Metalground
The citys not a nice place, but theres work here that
brings people from all over the world. People, in turn,
bring their monsters. Gone are the days of local governments, of packs who ruled large territories and covenants
which commanded cities. While supernatural creatures
still have local power structures, their marginalization
has combined with improved communication to create
global, decentralized monster communities. The social
lines between various kinds of supernaturals are blurring,
with individual coteries, packs and cabals looking for
every scrap of help they can get.
Adaptation
Technology doesnt always work, and even when
it does, it doesnt always do what we want. Even as information technology equipment becomes too complex
for most people to tinker with, those who can keep up
become more obsessed and, often, more in demand. The
adaptation of existing technology and culture to niche
or individual needs goes back to the very beginning of
cyberpunk. Its that DIY ethic (along with a healthy dose
of raging against the machine) that puts the punk in
its name.
Sin-Eaters have almost unwittingly become masters
of cultural adaptation. Today, their patchwork culture
reinvents itself with every passing decade. Tomorrow,
they retain their cultural agility but they have history.
The dawn of the twenty-first century is seen as the time
when, for the first time, they truly began to understand
death.
While hunters and supernaturals attempt to coopt the system, the Bound are sharpening its bleeding
edge. The result is something entirely unexpected:
Sin-Eaters found the first global supernatural culture in
which the others can meet in safety and on common

ground. They lead the fashion, the knowledge building, the diplomacy. Bound celebrations like the Day of
the Dead become sacred to creatures around the world.
Their understanding of the one thing everyone struggles
helplessly against makes them the right people to bring
monsters together.
Of course, company brings contempt. As the Bound
become the medium that binds everyone else, grudges
that would have been eased by the passage of time find
immediate fulfillment. The new supernatural culture is
as violent as it is vibrant. There is anger, and there is
murder, and guess who has to clean up the mess?
Tomorrow Country
Cobbled together solutions can be unreliable, and
those who have built something once will rarely leave
it alone, especially if theres someone trying to stop or
outdo them. Hackers on all sides of the law race each
other to make systems and break them. Hardware tinkerers find themselves bombarded with a stream of new
models to take apart and an ever-growing cache of old
models to wax nostalgic about.
Those without power hack with all the more vigor.
Cowboys in the employ of the Maiya are pretty damned
good, but their Estonian neighbors are getting even
better.
Metalground
In the city, youre either still moving, or youre spare
parts. Plugins and organs can be stripped out with relative
ease, especially if you dont care about the health of the
donor. Supernatural creatures can be stripped down, too,
something both the Moros and the Ordo Dracul show a
distinct inclination towards.
Supernatural flesh-hacking is in its infancy, but
the results are already frightening. New generations of
Pandorans scurry through the night, no longer limited
by the availability of Promethean Pyros. Altered by
engineered Vitae or Supernal magic, the Pandorans can
steal vitality from these and other sources. Worse, they
no longer go dormant. Ever.
The Network
Information networks are a key part of cyberpunk
fiction. Broadly speaking, William Gibsons cyberspace
or Neal Stephensons metaverse are equivalent to the
Internet. The special effects are different, but theyre
just skins on top of the same concept. Indeed, as Gibson
begins to suggest in Mona Lisa Overdrive, the Network
isnt made up of computers, its something that runs
on top of them. Sites like Facebook work on a similar
principle: they catalog and index existing networks (in
20
this case, human social ones) and connect them (social

networks to advertising databases).
That starts to make the Network sound like a
spiritual construct, and, indeed, journeys onto the net in
cyberpunk fiction often have the feel of journeys into the
Otherworld. Gibson describes cyberspace as a consensual hallucination in his 1982 story Burning Chrome.
In Count Zero, the sequel to Neuromancer, religious practitioners misidentify the liberated artificial intelligences
from the latter book as the Loa. Cyberpunks figurative
use of supernatural descriptions for the Network are too
numerous to mention. Serial Experiments Lain suggests
the mingling of the virtual and physical worlds in a way
thats Mage players might find familiar.
The Network could be mapped onto Twilight or
the Supernal realms, in which case information ubiquity
could be a form of mass Awakening. It might simply
behave in a parallel manner, with spiritual powers or
newly created equivalents affecting cyberspace. On the
other hand, time spent on the Network can be pretty
engrossing, with hours slipping away before you notice.
Perhaps its simply become a hunting ground for the True
Fae. You jack in, but your Fetch jacks out.
Probably, though, the Network is thoroughly rooted
in the physical world. Supernatural creatures get no special privileges there, and they should be worried about
that. The more data becomes available, the easier theyll
be to detect.
Tomorrow Country
Everything is known, but not everybody can get
access to it. Corporations can gather pinpoint data on
customers... more data, in fact, than theyve yet figured
out how to leverage. Identity theft is still a big business,
but the game has changed: many identities are for sale
on the open market. Your digital footprint can be more
important than you, taking on a life of its own. At this
point its more predictable, and youve probably automated most of your spending.
The system needs to keep you around, sure. You have
to keep putting money in, or theres no point in trying to
get money out of you. Still, individuals can be difficult
variables, and youve got a lot to do. Why not just let the
system make your decisions? After all, it already knows
what you like...
Metalground
This is how the Masquerade died. Not with a bang,
but a whimper. Humans always believed in the monsters,
knew instinctively to fear them, but they pushed that
knowledge down. If they couldnt quash their fears, at
least they could layer new beliefs atop the ancient and
unsettling ones.
The world got too big, though. The disasters that

increased adult mortality effectively increased birth rate.
After each baby boom started to mature, there was an
explosion of vampires ready to take advantage. Worked
well enough, until the human populations normalized for
a while and the predation became statistically obvious.
The great machines could see that there was something
missing, and they told the mortals that created them.
Those in power tried to keep secrets and take measured steps, but they failed. The information was there,
and there were curious mortals who knew how to get to it.
Once the vampires were discovered, similar techniques
began to unravel the existence of other monsters... monsters a few vampires were willing and able to rat out.
Then the Authorities came to the city, and the
monsters became one fear among many.
Props
Megacorps and AIs
Mega-corporations and artiicial intelligences are

both created by mainstream culture, and both become so
large and complex as to be alien and incomprehensible.
They may even be synonymous, with big business run
by or relying on unfathomable machines.
Power resides in corporations more than in governments. Perhaps this is because nations have gone
bankrupt, or because government functions have become
increasingly privatized. Governments may simply be irrelevant to your setting, with agents of law and order and
taxation a far more distant concern than the Auditors
dispatched by a characters former employer.
Corporations are easy to do wrong. As AIs can become Lovecraftian gods, corporations become the traditional Satan, doing evil just because. Theyre murderous
and authoritarian just because, and going on a corporate
payroll is synonymous with moral corruption. That can
work for shorter narratives, when your game is focusing
on action and consequences in the near-term. You dont
really need to know whats in the suitcase, why Mr. Smith
wants it so badly, or why Mr. Smith is willing to assemble
a group of extralegal cutthroats to get it back.
At the climax of Neuromancer, the titular intelligence explains that its name is an allusion to necromancy, and refers to the virtual environment its using
to communicate as the land of the dead. Aspects of the
novels twin AIs go on to become unknowable gods moving through cyberspace. Put the razor hands aside and
pick up Occams: In the World of Darkness, the simplest
explanation is that AIs are ghosts, spirits, or something
similar enough to be indistinguishable.
21
THEME OF THE NETWORK
Tier Three characters, whether Kindred, hunter or

Bound, find the assets of megacorporations useful, but the
real power is in artificial intelligence. AIs make clandestine supernatural organizations more agile, and they keep
secrets better than human thralls or contacts.
Tomorrow Country
The mega corporations are much like those we have
today. There are fewer multinational conglomerates,
but you cant tell that from advertising or packaging.
Marketing analysts had realized by the dawn of the 21st
century that people liked the illusion of choice. That, for
example, if there were two electronics chains in a region,
and one bought the other, maintaining the separate store
brands would maintain higher sales.
People arent dumb, of coursethey know that wealth
is concentrated in fewer places than ever before, and that
city governments couldnt sustain development without
corporate sponsorship. Few care, though, and it takes a
strange kind of person to even consider doing something
about it. Even as life gets more expensive year by year, it can
still be lived, and thats all most people care about.
Tomorrow Country does not include artificial intelligences. While researchers push forward with every
passing year, they have yet to create AI in the sense
discussed here. When they do, its unlikely that anybody
will be ready.
Metalground
The Authorities depend on the corporations
for money, and the artificial intelligences to cement
their rule. The machines help maintain total information awareness, or something as close to it as can be
achieved.
When an artiicial intelligence becomes complex
enough, it may simply merge with its spirit, much as
the soul attaches to a human consciousness. This spirit
is born in the physical worldit has never been across
the Gauntlet, and likely has no interest in crossing.
The spirit inherently possesses the Fetter Numen (Book
of Spirits, p. 141). It exists in any information system
(electronic or otherwise) capable of hosting signiicant
portions of the intelligence that gave birth to it. In each
location, its vulnerable as if it existed only there. The
spirit can control any systems that it would as a soulless intelligence, but requires Numina to do anything
beyond that. So, for example, a server farm hosting an
intelligence might be defended by alarms, automated
weaponry, and so on, which the spirit could control.
However, it wouldnt be able to possess a guards gun
without developing additional powers.
Werewolves are cast in the unlikely role of being the
creatures in the World of Darkness most likely to negoti-
ate directly with, or confront, artificial intelligences.

As corporations become defined by their internal
cultures, their company hymns, the march of branding
and internal messaging, they may gain a literal company
spirit. The spirit doesnt control the corporation literally.
Unlike an AI, the corporation is made up of individual
people, with their own ideas, plans, and ways of doing
things. Yet, as the organization rules suggest, it has a
personality. Procedures, equipment, inside jokesall of
them can carry the voice of the spirit.
If the collective nature of corporations makes them
callous, the spirit can make them cruel. A corporation
spirit has all of the greed and capriciousness of any spirit,
but even the weakest have broader power bases. Once
per day, around 3 a.m. local time, they can cross the
Gauntlet at any location owned by the company or its
employees, or lived in for an extended period by those
employees (some people take their work home).
The ability to cross into the physical world functions as Gauntlet Breach (Book of Spirits, p. 142), but
is restricted to the aforementioned sites. Most corporation spirits also possess the Numina Fetter and/or Living
Fetter (Book of Spirits, p. 143), enabling them to engage
in at least limited possession of objects and people in
the physical world. The spirit doesnt act so much in
the corporations interests as it does the corporations
nature: it follows the organizations Virtue and Vice.
They usually possess Influence not over the corporation
itself, but over some of the things it produces or uses,
like pharmaceuticals or manufacturing equipment. They
may look for a monopoly, devouring other spirits with
similar Influence.
Alternatively, corporations might be haunted by
outside spirits with Influences related to their specialties,
Virtues, or Vices. In headquarters towers or corporate
arcologies, they nest, devouring their fellows and creating a spiritual dead zone.
Cyberware
In cyberpunk, technology doesnt just surround
humanity, it invades. Or, rather, its invited to occupy.
Characters like Molly Millions or the Magnetic Dog
Sisters become so obsessed with strength or aesthetics
or both that they rewire and rebuild themselves. Black
market surgeonsthe same who provide much-needed
medical care to the underclassesjack up, speed up and
pump up human bodies to become weapons.
In the standard World of Darkness, these kinds of
unnatural abilities tend to draw characters away from
humanity, towards the hungry beasts in their hearts or
the spirits that wait on the other side of the Gauntlet.
The cost of power is often monstrosity.
22
Not so in cyberpunk iction. A character like Molly

is no less human for all her modifications. Shes still
angry, proud, and obsessed with either self-control or
its complete abdication.
Is there a middle ground? Maybe there doesnt need
to be. After all, the monstrous descents of characters
in the World of Darkness are metaphors for people losing whats good or necessary in themselves. For all that,
though, they become no less human; they merely embody
the worst of humanity.
Tomorrow Country
Not everyone has Plugins, but everyone knows
someone who does. For several years after it became
widespread, augmentation was a fashion statement, but
its so common now as to be almost beneath notice.
Medical experts and the media cant talk enough about
the next step.
Why replace just one system, knitting together
clean, manufactured implants with dirty, legacy flesh?
Shouldnt it be simpler to just move a human being into
a synthetic body? Why stop there, even? With the ability to replicate memories and sensory experience, fully
synthetic humans are within reach.
Metalground
Meet Cheiron Global. While its component corporations downplay and gloss over their sources, they
make a killing harvesting supernatural body parts and
using them to augment human bodies. Ashwood Abbey

is long gone, but its spirit lives on as the wealthier classes
inject vampire blood for sexual performance or stave off
death with a graft of someone elses soul.
The thousand processes used to turn dirty, frightening monsters into clean, fashionable augmentations
are collectively referred to as rendering. Werewolves
find themselves in demand. Theyre hunted as sources
of durable, quickly-regenerating tissue, but theyre also
prized as harvesters.
Werewolves, however, are also a powerful force
within Cheiron. Their ability to mediate with and
manipulate spirits makes them ideal surgeons, preventing otherwise messy rejections. Some mages are also
employed in this capacity, but Cheiron fears the witches
for their ability to sunder reality itself. Information
from the Aegis Archives indicates that mages caused a
catastrophe so vast it can no longer even be understood.
Theres a worse discovery: they may have done that more
than once.
Cheirons most respected and feared surgeon is the
Man with White Hands. Employed directly by Global, he
consults on the direst cases, cutting and splicing flesh and
spirit with sickening ease. He always wears white surgical
gloves, an anachronism which distracts from his most
mysterious quality: that no one has ever seen his hands.
He has no aura, but those who should be able to sense feel
the still cold of a medical freezer when they look at him.
23
MEGACORPS AND AI AND CYBERWARE
The InfInite Macabre
Space Opera in the World of Darkness
Beyond the ring lurks a moon whose very shapewhose very essenceis formed of
squirming thorns, tangled hedgerows, and alien trees.
Inside a defunct planetary outpost, a throng of self-made monsters fuses cable and hull
scrap to one anothers reanimated flesh, each powered by elements never seen by man.
Layered beneath this plane of existence is another: a place of dead stars and skull-ships, a
wretched Otherspace, a haunted Underworld.
This is the Infinite Macabre.
This book includes:
Suggestions and rules shifts on how to incorporate the World of Darkness into a space
opera game
Rules for starships and starship combat
Guidance on making your own alien species
Credits
Written by: Chuck Wendig

Inspired by Material from: Stephen Herron
World of Darkness created by Mark ReinHagen
Art Director: Richard Thomas
Book Design: Ron Thompson
Interior Art: Brian LeBlanc
Cover Art: Mathias Kollros
White Wolf and Vampire the Requiem are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. The World of Darkness,
Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean the Created, Changeling the Lost,
Hunter the Vigil and Geist the Sin-Eaters are trademarks of CCP hf.
This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction
The InfInite Macabre
Space Opera in the World of Darkness
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Beyond the ring lurks a moon whose very shapewhose very essenceis
formed of squirming thorns, tangled hedgerows, and alien trees.
Floating amidst the asteroids are the slaver ships, Byzantine chassis
playing home to the grotesque feudalities of blood-hungry vampires.
Inside a defunct planetary outpost, a throng of self-made monsters fuses
cable and hull scrap to one anothers reanimated flesh, each powered by
elements never seen by man.
Five Watchtowers sit hidden on distant planets, each ninety-nine parsecs
from the next, each plotted on a map to form a perfect flat-planed pentagon
in three-dimensional spaceor an upside-down star. Each Watchtower has
its pilgrims and proselytes, all with unparalleled power.
Spiritssome invisible, some so alien in their corporealitylit from
moon to moon, star to star, hunted in turn by men and women whose hearts
are those of hungry wolves.
Layered beneath this plane of existence is another: a place of dead stars
and skull-ships, a wretched Otherspace, a haunted Underworld.
This is the Infinite Macabre.
This is the World of Darkness cast forward in timeor so far backward
it ceases to matterand thrown deep into the bleakest, strangest recesses
of unknown space.
The Nature of Space Opera
This product endeavors to show you how you might transform the World
of Darkness by thrusting it into the screaming maw of a whole separate
genre: space opera.
Is it a strange it? Hardly. Consider these characteristics which are
sometimes considered the core elements of space opera:
Its often a combination of fantasy and science-iction. (The World of
Darkness is very much a dark fantasy and horror roleplaying game.)
It tends not to be hard sci-i. (The World of Darkness relies more on
magical realism than hard scientiic principle.)
It often features magical elements to go with the science-iction. (The
World of Darkness has magical elements in spades.)
Adjectives that might be used to describe space operate include:
Romantic, romantic (big R, small r, both), operatic, epic, political or astropolitical. (The World of Darkness plays well with all these adjectives: think
of the florid and terrible politics of the vampire covenants, the grim romance
seen in Changeling, the epic nature of the Forsaken versus the Pure or the
fallen world nature found in Mage.)
4
INFINITE MACABRE-SPACE OPERA IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
Yes, your game will still be subject to certain fundamental alterationsfor example, the World of Darkness
tends to irst be expressed on a local level (i.e. Whats
going on in your city?), and here the scope of the game
(and the canvas upon which it is painted) grows ininitely more epic. While a game like Hunter: The Vigil
positswith the conspiracy tiera global horror, space
opera blows even that out of the water and demands a
galactic playing ield. In fact, think of this as a fourth
tier grafted onto the World of Darkness setting: the
galactic tier.
But despite those changes, the base components
remain the same. Instead of telling a story about the betrayal of the vampire Prince, youre instead talking about
the betrayal of a vampire Imperatrix. Instead of werewolves protecting their territory from spirit invasions,
theyre chasing spirits across distant nebula. Mages can
appear anywhere, and the witch hunters of the Malleus
Maleficarum come hunting after them with ships that
look like industrial cathedrals ripped out of the earths
mooring and thrown into space.
The Big Question

The one big question you really want to ask yourself
before you dive into The Infinite Macabre at your game
table is: has the veil of secrecy shielding the monsters
been dropped? You have at your disposal two very different modes of play that branch off from the answer to
this question.
On the one hand, if the answer is that the secrecy
remains, then you are accepting that the conditions
governing the societies of these nocturnal denizens remain firmly in place. In other words, the Masquerade is
still in play, werewolves are still protected by Lunacy, a
changelings Mask is ultimately lost to the mad beauty
of the Mien, and so forth. Mankind is out there among
the stars, and he still doesnt realize that the parasites
and goblins and immortal terrors are out there with him.
This model leans toward horror.
On the other hand, your answer might be that the
secrecy has been removed (or, depending on how you play
it, it may never have been in place to begin with). More
succinctly, mankind knows what monsters have come
with him into space. He knows that the vampires could
come to enslave him for his blood and drag him off to
the farthest lung corners of known space. He knows that
certain necromantic cults hide on distant moons hoping to
reanimate dead tissue by fusing it with energy stolen from
stars. Mankind is sure to fear the horrible long-limbed astronauts that come from within open vents and through
rivet holes to steal them away to the place of thorns and
bramble. Further, it demonstrates that some of your epic
romance and planetary politics are driven by the monsters
as much as they are the humansit allows for, say, a

fringe empire of sorcerers or an armada of vampire cruisers
stalking the space lanes. While this doesnt do away with
horror, this model leans toward dark fantasy.
This product is written with the second assumption
in mind. We want the monsters out in the open because
it creates more fantastical conditions. Instead of having
to worry about bizarre-faced aliens wandering the market
bazaar or space-dock, we get to have pale bloodsuckers,
porcelain Prometheans, and the truly bizarre Lost rubbing
elbows with humanity. In this mode, the monsters become
the aliens so frequently seen in the various iterations
of space opera. It is, in its own weird way, a mutation
hybridizing Star Wars and Lovecraft (or, Heinlein plus
Doom, or Firefly plus Dead Space). Sound fun?
The Goal
Despite the title of this product, we do not have
an ininite number of pages in which to grant you
a fully-stocked space opera setting. As such, were
trying to walk the balance beam between giving you cool original material to drop into your
game and encouraging you to answer the questions with your own awesome material. The end
result of this product is that you, as Storyteller or
player, should be able to put together your own
unique vision of what World of Darkness space
opera means at your game table.
This Wretched
Universe
Its a mad universe, a black tapestry held together by

a million pinpricks of light, by bands of chromatic light,
by solar storms and space lanes and rings of comet dust.
People are out there, spread out across the starsbut
so are the monsters. They once hid in the shadows, but
to them, space is one big endless shadowan infinite
nighttime in which to wander.
So, you want to know how the universe out there
could work for your space opera game?
The Star Chart
Every good pilot worth his salt has a galactic star

chartshining bright on a monitor, or hanging on a
wall, dusty and torn at the edges.
5
THIS WRETCHED UNIVERSE
The way the universe probably works in your space

opera game is just like youve seen in a number of ilms
or video games: the universe features a number of charted
galaxies separated by parsecs (one parsec = 3.3 light years).
These galaxies are either star systems (a galaxy comprising only stars orbiting one another) or planetary systems
(a galaxy where planets orbit one or several stars). These
galaxies may have names that coincide with what we call
them now (Procyon, Polaris, Sirius, etc), but since this is
the World of Darkness, dont feel like you cant go with
something more apropos to the mood (Black Mariah,
Wolf Sun, Red Nebula, Blood Run). They also may be
named after those who discovered them.
Whats charted is only known space. The universe
is far bigger than what man and monster have yet discovered, thus giving the expanse of space an uncharted
Wild West (or western expansion, or colonization) feel.
Usually, the star chart is bordered by some kind of Here
There Be Dragons linepast that border lies, well, who
knows what? Space horrors? Distant aliens? Mad gods
exiled from this universe? Ancient vampires who have
gone beyond the fringe? The irst Promethean? The True
Oracles capable of galaxy-shifting sorcery?
For the record, we recommend giving that border a
namewe happen to like the Rubicon, but any name
(the Line, the Edge, the Brink, the Bloodline) that
evokes a point of no return. Characters should know that
when they cross it, its time to worry.
A star chart may also chart the Empires of Man, as
noted below (p. 10).
Each galaxy is likely separated by between 100,000
and 3,000,000 parsecsconventional spacecraft cannot
make the journey between galaxies in a timely fashion
(i.e. before everybody on board perishes from old age or
from madness born in the rigors of space). Thus, traveling between systems requires use of the Stygian Gates
found below (p. 8).
Massive Space Objects
Within the galaxiesand, in some cases, between

themare the massive space objects found commonly
in space opera properties.
Planets
In space opera, planets are rarely so realistically
deined as having different climates, temperate zones or
biomes; in fact, theyre pretty simplistic in definition.
Desert planet. Ice planet. Forest, jungle, tundra, and so
forth. Again, not realistic, but thats the nature of space
opera: hard sci-fi, this is not.
Curiously, every galaxy has a few planets that feature
breathable air. Further, those that dont have breathable
air still have habitable temperatures (meaning, temperatures that dont automatically sear humans to a crisp or
blast-freeze them into bloodsicles).
Some planets likely have a biome that is explicitly
humanin other words, instead of tundra or grassland,
the whole planet is one giant metropolis. (And those
that are so-called city planets might make use of The
Infinite Macabres sister product, Bleeding Edge.)
As above, planetary names in this mode are those
best suited when theyre grim, moody, and bound up
in the feel of the World of Darkness. (The planets in
Firefly/Serenity are not a bad example: Whitefall, Osiris,
Persephone, Shadow.)
Moons
Moons, like planets, are often defined by a single
biome: Oh, this is an ocean moon, or, We are cleared
for a landing on the Veldt.
Moons tend to be wilder, less colonized, often home
only to outposts, farms, or industrial faculties (strip
mines, weapons manufacturers, work camps).
Stardocks
In those systems without planets, one is likely to find
a stardock and space stations. They can look like anything: turning wheels, cathedral-like structures, cubes,
shimmering solar fans hundreds of miles wide, spheres,
cylinders and so forth.
Stardocks are often home to a permanent populationlow as a thousand, high as a hundred thousand
but see far greater numbers coming through the station
as traffic.
The purpose of each stardock is driven by those who
created it: as a refueling station, marketplace, military
base, research and development lab, ore refinery, spacecraft construction depot or ammo dump. Many are a mix
of these elements: most stardocks, for instance, have
some kind of trading bazaar and refueling capabilities.
The feel, form and function of an individual station
is determined by its keepers and creators. If a militaristic
empire serves as shepherd, expect Spartan design, an
autocratic feel and function that is clearly driven toward
war and conquest (ighter bays, martial training facilities,
heavily defensible).
Spacecraft
For us, the key word in space opera is space. Characters are going to spend a lot of time in the deep recesses
of outer space, flitting between the stars, traveling from
planet to moon, from stardock to Stygian Gate. This
necessitates one of the most awesome parts of space
opera: the spaceships.
6
The section below will help you determine the

stats on a spaceship and, more specifically, how players
might buy them for their characters. However, note that
the dots do not fully comprise all aspects of the ship in
question. Does the ship have a name? What does it look
like? Do you ind any value in considering how the crafts
of different monster types might look? Is the ship of a
Ventrue vampire family a regal, almost stately affair,
decked in chrome, titanium or even brass? What does the
floating library of a number of Atlantean mages look like?
Or that of a series of dream-scourging changelings (or
worse, the True Fae)? Is a Promethean ship as cobbledtogether as they are? Could the whole ship go nuclear
and turn into some kind of living Pandoran lurching its
way through the dark void?
Merit: Spaceship ( to )
Effect: The character owns, or has part-ownership

of, a spaceship. This vessel may be a small, short-range,
single-person fighter or interplanetary transport. It could
be a large cargo vessel capable of faster-than-light travel.
It might even be an intended-for-decommission military
starship that the character has pulled some strings to
obtain.
The usefulness of a ship depends upon how big it
is, how fast, how much cargo (or how many passengers)
it can support, and how well armed or defended it is.
In game terms, dots spent on the Spaceship Merit need
to be distributed among four categories: Size, Speed,
Weapons, and Armor. The nimble short range ighter
may thus have no dots in Size, four dots in Speed, and
two dots in both Weapons and Armor. The cargo ship
Tranquility may have three dots in Size, two dots in
Speed, no dots in Weapons and three dots in Armor.
The Task Force: Valkyrie destroyer Odin may have five
dots in Size, one dot in speed, ive dots in Weapons, and
five dots in Armor
Spaceship Size: The actual size of the ship, it determines the number of points of Structure a given ship has
(for Starship Combat, below) and the amount of cargo it
can carry (either in a hold or as cargo containers attached
to or towed by the vessel).
Very tiny: either a one- or two-seat ighter or
personal shuttle. Not comfortable or useful for carrying
cargo. This ship has 20 points of Structure.
A small ship that can hold four people comfortably, or a couple more with less comfort. Crew hot-rack
(squeeze in more than one member per bunk), as the ship
has only enough sleeping space for half the crew. There
might be a small room to eat meals, and cargo space for
a couple of tons of cargo (about 10 feet by 10 feet). This
ship has 40 points of Structure.
A small-to-mid-sized ship, with cabins for each

crew member (up to eight or ten) and cargo space for
up to fifty tons of cargo. This ship has 60 points of
Structure.
A mid-size vessel, probably carrying a dozen
crew members and the same again as paying passengers.
The ship is capable of carrying a few hundred tons of
cargo. This ship has 80 points of Structure.
A large vessel. It can carry a couple of thousand tons of cargo, dozens of passengers and might be
quite luxurious. It can contain a hundred plus crew
members. This ship has 100 points of Structure.
The largest capital ships and most lumbering cargo vessels, capable of carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo, or thousands of crew and troops
(and even smaller vehicles). These are the largest ships
capable of traveling between stars. This ship has 120
points of Structure.
Spaceship Speed: An abstract representation of how
fast a ship can accelerate, decelerate and change heading.
Its a mixture of agility and raw speed, handy to use to
compare with other ships, especially if using the optional
Starship Combat rules below. The Speed rating is equal
to the ships Handling rating (for combat purposes).
This ship is effectively a big space slug: low acceleration, poor maneuverability.
These vessels change speed slowly, but its enough
to get them from one place to another. Ships with
this Speed do not need to lit about nimbly. Passenger
shuttles and huge, lumbering ships may have only one
dot in Speed.
These ships move around star systems at a slow
and steady rate, taking a few hours to move between a
planet and its moons and days or a week to get to the
outer worlds. They arent especially quick or nimble.
These ships are faster than average and more
agile. The vast majority of ighters and police/military
ships move with this level of swiftness. Cargo vessels
this fast are used for courier duties or to carry perishable
goods.
A ship this fast is almost certainly a military,
police or pirate vessel (cargo ships this fast are probably smuggling illegal goods past blockades or security
perimeters).
Only the fastest, most expensive ighters are
this agile and fast. Private vessels with this Speed rating
may be racers or corporate couriers and any cargo ship
this fast is going to attract attention immediately.
Spaceship Weapons: indicate the ships weapons
capabilities. Most ships are armed, though only cursorily,
enough to distract a pirate and get out of sight. Still, the
ships that characters possess might potentially be armed
to the teeth. Dots in this Merit determine how advanced
7
SPACECRAFT
a ships weapons systems can be. At each level comes a

Damage rating: this rating is added to all attack rolls in
starship combat. (How these weapons function is up to
you and your imagination: cannons, modified mining
lasers, missile batteries, EMPs, etc.)
The ship has no weapons system installed.
A single dot of Weapons indicates a small laser
or mass driver used for short-range or point defense.
(+1 attack)
Most military ighters have this Weapon rating,
as do most police and security vessels. (+2 attack)
The ships Weaponry systems are advanced,
and may include missiles and plasma cannons, for both
short and long range destructive power. The majority of
warships have this rating. (+4 attack)
Weaponry systems at this level are highly advanced and quite devastating, capable of badly damaging
starships with a single burst, but also ravaging targets on
a planets surface. (+8 attack)
At this level, weapons systems become truly
annihilating: orbital nukes, lasers that can bisect most
ships, swarm missiles. (+16 attack)
Spaceship Armor: This indicates how well-defended
the ship is from attack, both in defensive systems (chaff,
misdirection, hacking opponents weapons systems)
and in terms of actual armor. Each dot adds up to one
point of Durability (one dot is Durability 1, three dots is
Durability 3, and so forth). While Durability technically
only measures physical resistance, here it also represents
the ships countermeasures. Any attack successes must
exceed a ships Durability to actually do damage: the
rest meet the hull, force fields, or are otherwise countermanded by defensive systems.
Starship Combat
In terms of starship combat, the vehicle rules in
the World of Darkness Rulebook (p. 141) still roughly
apply.
A ships Structure is deined by Size, above.
A ships Acceleration is ive times the Speed rating. This is measured in miles-per-turn (which, if you
care, means that a ship with Speed ive moves at about
twenty-five miles per turn or eight miles per second, and
the speed of light is about ifty miles per second).
Commanding a ships weapons systems necessitates a
Dexterity + Computers roll with a Specialty in Weapons
Systems. Without this Specialty, the roll is subject to a
-3 penalty. A character cannot pilot and use weapons
systems at the same time (which is why most starships
have multiple crew members). Only one character may
make attack rolls on behalf of the ship in a given turn of
combat. The ships Weapons rating allows the character
to add a number of dice to the attack.
Piloting the ship requires a Dexterity + Drive roll.

Add in the Handling as a modiier (Handling is equal
to dots in the Speed rating).
As with traditional vehicular combat, when accumulated Structure damage exceeds Durability, a -1 penalty
is imposed upon all Pilot rolls. Likewise a -1 penalty is
applied to all other ships system rolls (Weaponry, Engineering, etc). However, when the Structure is reduced to
the last three points available, this penalty increases to
-3 to any skill checks using ship systems. Moreover, the
ships Speed is reduced by half. When only one point of
Structure is left, this indicates that the ship is losing life
support: characters only have enough oxygen equal to
twice the ships Size rating in minutes. Unless the crew
has spacesuits, they are going to suffocate.
Pilots can take evasive maneuvers during combat.
Such a maneuver costs one Willpower point on the
pilots behalf. No characters may make any ship attacks
during that turn. The evasive maneuvers roll is the same
as the Pilot roll (Dexterity + Drive + Handling). Successes on that roll subtract from any attack rolls made
subsequently in that turn.
Repairing damage necessitates a Craft roll. Each
check represents one hours worth of work and each success repairs one point of Structure damage. A character
can attempt to repair a ship in the middle of combat using
an emergency repair maneuver, but doing so necessitates
expending a Willpower point and accepting a -5 penalty
to the roll. However, this signiicantly moves up the time
frame: the down-and-dirty repairs take only one minute
to execute. Only ive points of Structure damage can
be repaired in this way (such brutal repair only gets the
mechanic so far), but it might be the line between life
inside the ship and death in the unforgiving vacuum
of space. Repairs can be the result of a teamwork roll
(p. 134, World of Darkness Rulebook). In the case of
emergency repairs, only the primary actor must spend the
Willpower point, but all actors suffer the -5 penalty.
Stygian Gates:
The Dread Doors
Space is not without its scars. It has a history that

goes back millennia, to before mankind ever ventured
into the great beyond. What man found in the deepest
recesses of space are tremendous gates, each a different
shapethis one a ragged womb, that one a jagged star,
a third another a gently-turning halo, and so on. All
are made of stone, as if shaped by an artist: sigils have
been carved into the stone which have significance to
few humans but to many monstersthe mages believe
it to be some proto-Atlantean script while the Forsaken
8
believe it to be a language penned by star-faring spirits.

Vampires believe them to be the words uttered by their
most nightmarish forbears, while changelings believe
that theyve seen these symbols before: tattooed on the
lesh of the True Fae that took them.
Not every system has one, but most do. The surfeit
of black holes out there in the void leads many to believe
that these gates were once black holes, harnessed and
made to serve the needs of some ancientand possibly
alienantecedent.
Since no Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel is yet
possible (outside of mages can manage), these gates are
the only way to travel between galaxies. Accessing the
gate is simple, but piloting a ship through the gate is
not enough. Someone on board must give up a point
of Willpower (and in doing so, can feel the point being
psychically leeched from them, as if the gate is suddenly
very aware of them) or, alternately, accept one point of
lethal damage (which manifests as a wound in the shape
of the gate itself).
It would be most desirable for a ship to enter at one
gate and exit immediately at anotherbut, sadly, that
is not the case. The gates dont work like that; they are
not jump stations. Rather, the gates (or as theyre
sometimes called, Dread Doors) transport ships into an
alternate dimension, one where time is slowed and space
is contracted (further lending credence to the notion that

the Stygian Gates are, or were once, black holes).
The 10% Rule
Upon entering a Stygian Gate, the Storyteller

should roll one die out in the open for all to see.
If the die shows up 2 through 10, the standard effects
apply (see Between Space, below).
If the die comes up as a 1, well, things dont necessarily go as expected. In most cases, the ship is still
teleported into Between Space, but something goes
awry along the way (Storytellers choice). Consult the
list below, or make up your own:
Characters all suffer a minor derangement for one
week (though like with all derangements, the effects can
be subdued or resisted).
All characters lose a point of Vitae (incurring a
point of lethal damage in all non-vampire characters).
Shapeshifting characters are forced to shapeshift.
Characters begin to suffer horrible nightmares.
Characters begin to suffer horrible hallucinations.
Ship doesnt enter Between Space, but rather,
appears in the atmosphere of a Thornworld (see the
section on Changelings, p. 19).
9
STGIAN GATES-THE DREAD DOORS
Between Space:
The Dismal Void, The Underworld
They call it Between Space, but anybody who

knows shit about shit recognizes that this is the Land
of the Dead, except out here in the awful vacuum of
space.
Out here, space isnt black so much as gray. Or, at
times, jaundiced (the color of a sickened bile duct). Ship
systems suffer havoc: they fritz out, they show inconsistent readings, they capture strange transmissions and
frequencies from ships gone missing (or ships that never
existed in the irst place). Most worrisome are the ghosts
and doppelgangers: Out a porthole window, characters
might see ghost ships or even lone individuals floating
out there in the void, sometimes fully-fleshed, other
times spectral and diaphanous. If its not ghosts, its the
doppelgangers, or duplicates: ships and characters made
to mirror their own. (Sometimes these apparitions even
try to hail the characters and communicate with them.
Most recognize that this is an unwise course of action
and simply ignore such communications.)
So, why do this at all? Why traverse this dead
void, this place beyond the galactic curtain? Because
this is the only way to travel between galaxies without
cryogenically freezing a ships inhabitants (or, instead,
allowing whole generations of pilots to rise and fall, to
live and die).
Time is telescoped while space is contracted. Every
100,000 parsecs traveled only requires a reasonably short
travel time (assume that it takes ive hours minus the
ships Speed rating to travel 100,000 parsecs, to a minimum of one hour). A ship with a Speed of 5 traveling
to the farthest-flung galaxy some 3,000,000 parsecs away
will only necessitate a 30-hour journey.
Problem is, out here, every hour is a troubling one.
After the ninth hour, characters begin to lose Willpower
points at a rate of one per hour. Once they reach zero
Willpower, they feel truly listlessat the Storytellers
discretion, the characters may even have a hard time
deciding to leave Between Space, or they may be more
likely to answer communications from sinister specters
or mad doppelgangers. (And some say that once you
answer those calls, youve earned their attention and
cannot escape them until you give them what they want
or destroy them.) Further, characters cannot regain
Willpower points while in Between Space.
However, once they exit via another Stygian Gate,
they return to normal space and time.
Denizens of the
Deep Dark
Nowhere
Of course, what really sets The Infinite Macabre

apart from any other iteration of the space opera subgenre
are the denizens of the World of Darkness: monsters
dragged from their terrestrial shadows and thrown into
the yawning abyss of outer space.
This section takes a look at the various supernatural
character types found in the World of Darkness setting
and how you might use them (or play them) in The
Infinite Macabre setting shard. Each character-type is
broken out into three sub-sections: System Shifts, which
explains any notable rule changes you might want to
consider in terms of using these creatures in The Infinite Macabre; Story Considerations, which endeavors to
provide cool story hooks and narrative ideas in order
to provide inspiration for your Infinite Macabre game;
and New Toy, where each new character-type gets a
new toy to play with (meaning, some kind of power
or fresh mechanic) in the playground of The Infinite
Macabre.
Humans and Hunters

System Shifts
Even the most stalwart human mind cannot always

handle the rigors of deep space travel. Assume that any
human who spends more days in space (without landing
and setting foot on some surface, be it planet or stardock)
than the dots possessed in his Willpower score will be
subject to possible mental illness. That illness plays out
similar to how a mild/severe derangement might: Isolation (mild) and Alienation (severe). Every day that the
character spends in space beyond his Willpower score,
the player must roll that characters Resolve + Composure pool. Success means that no ill mental effects are
felt. Exceptional success indicates that the character may
go another three days without making the roll. Failure
invokes a mild mental breakdown: the character begins
to suffer from the effects of Isolation, meaning any Social
rolls are penalized by -3 dice for the remaining 24 hours
(at which point the character may once more attempt
to resist the effects of this space madness). Dramatic
failure means the character suffers the severe version,
Alienation, for the remaining 24 hours; Alienation ups
the Social penalty to -5 dice, and the character may also
not regain Willpower during this time.
10
Another new derangement: Sleepless (mild) /

Insomniac (severe). This plays out like a regular derangement (as in, a character possesses it until it is cured).
Ever move to the city, then take a night and sleep in the
country? All that screaming silence? All that impenetrable
darkness? This is like that, but a thousand times worse.
Space is quiet. Cold. Distant. No day and night cycles,
either, which means busted-up Circadian rhythms. Some
characters find it very hard to sleep, and so they suffer
from this derangement. Whenever a character tries to
get eight hours of sleep, roll Resolve + Composure. Success means sleep (and the proper regaining of Willpower
in the morning). Failure, if Sleepless (mild), means a
restless and uncertain sleep, and no Willpower in the
morning. Failure, if Insomniac (severe), indicates that
the character literally does not sleep at allhe awakens
without regaining Willpower and he suffers a -3 penalty
to all dice pools during the subsequent day. This penalty lasts until the character sleeps eight hours straight.
For further ramiications, see Fatigue in the World of

Darkness Rulebook, pp. 179-180. (Note that this is
built for characters who arent used to space travel. For
characters who are acclimated to traversing the stars you
might reverse this to a degree they suffer madness when
forced to rest their heads while on a terrestrial body.)
If youre looking for a quick solution in terms
of arms and armor, you dont need to look beyond the
weapons already provided in the World of Darkness
Rulebook. Use the same stats and effects except instead
of saying .44 Magnum, its now a Phaser. Or a Photon Repeater. Or an Ion Cannon.
However, you might also want to create new weapons that are sci-fi appropriate and evoke different system
reactions. This following chart offers a handful of new
weapons, but you are as always encouraged to make up
your own (and once more we advise you not to be too
married to actual science given the fantastical nature of
space opera):
Type
Melee Weapon
Name
Vibro-Knife
Damage Size Strength

1(L)
1
n/a
Ranges Clip
n/a
Melee Weapon
Hydraul
Maul-Gloves
1(B)
n/a
Ranged Weapon
Cheiron Systems 3(L)

Bio-Rile
20/40/80 5
Ranged Weapon
Enervating Null 4(L)

Gun (3-Shot Pistol)
30/60/120 3
Explosive
Ion Grenade
n/a
n/a
n/a
Cost
Special
Vibrates through
particles; ignores
Durability
Grants the wielder

a +2 Strength when
worn
In addition to
damage also causes
bacterial infection
(one lethal point
per hour,
Sta + Resolve only
allowed with
antibiotic injection
Fires energy pulse;

any time it does
damage, it also
siphons one
Willpower point
BlastArea 2/
Throwing Mod +1,
does no damage
but shorts-out
electrical systems
and weapons for
a number of turns
equal to ive +
successes on roll
11
Humans/ and Hunters
Just as the universe is home to awesome new weapons, it is home to incredible new drugs, toothough,
in the spirit of the World of Darkness, none should be
without consequence. Consider the following new drugs
in play:
Nebula: Hallucinogen. One tends to see through
walls, and often hallucinates cosmic or celestial images
(nebula, supernovas or borealis effects, even in the comfort of ones own sleeping pod). Amps up Mental ability,
offering +3 to any Mental rolls, but also does a number
on ones ability to communicate, incurring a -5 penalty
to all Social rolls. Lasts for eight hours unless one takes
a Vitamin B shot to end its effects prematurely.
Red Tar: Red Tar doesnt just make everybody look
more desirable (the Tar Goggles effect), but it also
increases the characters own attractiveness by causing
him to both emit a pheromone and to gain a flush to his
cheeks. The character gains +2 to all Presence rolls unless that character has the Lust Vice, in which case the
bonus increases to +4. However, once the high wears
off (two to three hours later), the character cannot regain
Willpower for the next 24 hours.
Crater Dust: Anybody who inhales a puff-pod of
crater dust will feel immortal. And its partially true: a
character gains three dots to his Stamina Attribute for
one hour. During this time, he also suffers from the effects of the Megalomania derangement (severe, p. 97,
World of Darkness Rulebook). After the hour is up, the
character must sleep for eight hours immediately or gain
a headache that incurs a -3 Physical penalty.
Story Considerations
Deinitely consider the survival (and survival

horror) nature of space: sure, some ships might have
incredible greenhouses or even livestock pens, but alternately, what if youre a rag-tag cargo ship? Or a pirate ship
that needs to ly under radar? Not a lot of room for food
or clean water (though one hopes that the ship properly
processes the urine of those on board and recycles it).
What happens when characters get stuck in deep space
with no food? No water?
In space opera, mankind is often fragmented into
various empires, civilizations and races. Each group
is defined by certain traits, as if they are complete
monoculturesthe Halcyon Empire is militaristic; the
Peoples Republic of Ariadne suffer under a matrilineal
police state; the Tiresians are a race of psychic berserkers
who claw their eyes out at puberty, and so on.
Consider, too, the governmental nature of the
universe. In space opera, one often finds that there is
an oppressive majority and a rebellious (even anarchic)
minority like those found in Star Wars or Firefly. On
which side do the characters find themselves? Alternately, the universe might be cast into a Civil War (once
on the same side, now ighting amongst themselves) or

a full-bore Galactic War (every empire against every
empire). Once more, the question: do the characters
choose a side? Are they forced to one side? Can they
play all sides against the middle?
Did you know that, if you take a normal strain
of Salmonella and expose it to the rigors of space it
becomes more deadly? If you think the Cheiron Group
is not excited by this, youre nuts; space to them is an
exciting new playground. Every planet has new lora and
fauna to examine (read: exploit). Plus, more diseases
to cure (which sometimes necessitates manufacturing
the diseases, irst.) The monsters are different, too, out
therethe properties of vampire blood may work differently in Zero-G, the bile ducts of a werewolf grow black
and puckered when exposed to atmospheric re-entry,
and so on. Hell, rumor says that Cheiron is out there
taking over whole moons for their experimentation, all
without accountability.
Consider reimagining a number of the hunter
compacts and conspiracies:
Aegis Kai Doru: The galaxy is home to countless
ancient and/or alien artifactsnot just the Stygian
Gates, either. What about the Black Dais found on the
northernmost archipelago of the Hephaestus moon? Or
those jagged crystal-studded teeth found on planets
thousands of parsecs apart? Or the eerie Watchtowers,
the ones that aliens purportedly built, the ones which
those mages seem so goddamn interested in?
Ascending Ones: Religious ascetics who eschew
high technology whenever possible. Theyll travel on
ships but wont pilot them. They use old technology:
knives, swords, pistols. They search space for mythic
creatures and reagents for their bizarre Elixirs.
Ashwood Abbey: A secret club traversing the
planetary systemsa hellfire group whose membership
consists only of the richest and most eccentric ladies and
gentlemen. The galaxy is home to countless pains and
pleasures, and they seek them all out. Capture an alien
and snort the ashes of its burned lesh? Sure.
Cheiron Group: Potent pharmaceutical and
medical conglomerate found in most major systemsas
powerful as any empire, rumors exist of the Field Project
Division, a small army of Cheiron-paid mercenaries,
soldiers and scientists who range far and wide to confirm
Cheirons agenda. So many monsters, so many aliens,
so little time.
Long Night: Zealous fundamentalists who believe
that the universe must be made clean by Gods intervention. They predict universal cataclysm: a series
of supernovas and black holes that render the universe
inert and create a kind of reverse genesis. They seek
to destroy the Stygian Gates, believing them to be the
product of ancient devils.
12
Loyalists of Thule: So many dark corners of the

universe demand a lightthe Loyalists see themselves
as that light. They have to. Long ago, the founders ignored the rise of a terrible galactic empire and were even
complicit in its ascent. Now they have a debt to pay: ind
the places where the worst among us have gone and rout
them. Along the way, they seek to learn the troubling
secrets the universe hides.
Lucifuge: These bounty hunters with the Devils
blood travel alone or as part of mixed-conspiracy cells.
When a Lucifuge shows up on your stardock, you know
theres going to be trouble: administrators either give
them full clemency or work to make life as hard for
them as possible.
Malleus Maleficarum: The Church is out there
amongst the stars, building cathedrals on the spots of
ancient worship and sending missionaries to the farthest,
weirdest corners of space. These hunters know that the
monsters have come to the stars with mankind, and
recognize that the devils and demons will oppose mans
devotion to God and encourage sin. They destroy such
monstrous influence with fire and photon rounds.
Network Zero: Signal-pirates extraordinaire. Hijack every subspace frequency known to man to transmit
their anti-monster propaganda and to spy on anybody
who might be harboring some wretched creature out
there in The Infinite Macabre.
Null Mysteriis: Monsters do not exist; they are just
people who have been changed by their experiences out
there among the stars. Could it be a xenobacterium that
has caused the vampire plague? A rogue DNA infecting
the shapechangers? They seek the truththe scientific
truthin labs and through expeditions from system to
system.
Task Force VALKYRIE: Once an off-shoot of the
World Government, VALKYRIE is now a rogue agent
out there in the universe, broken away from the squabbling empires and oppressive regimes, funded by various
mysterious sources in order to hunt down and capture the
galaxys most notorious supernatural criminals.
The Union: Theyre everywhere. You just dont realize it. That nameless mechanic who ixes your moisture
vaporator? That smuggler who brings in illicit goods to
the families that need them? The janitor on board the
space frigate? Theyre all hunters. A union of secret hunters found in every corner of the worldhalf neighborhood watch, half maia, all monster killer.
New Toy: Stygian Bezoar ( to )
This pebble-sized hunk of strange smooth stone

etched faintly with the whorling sigils found on the
Stygian Gates and made of the same unidentiiable
materialare highly sought after by the planet-hopping
Relic hunters of the Aegis Kai Doru.
Cost: one lethal damage as the character swallows

the stone and 1-5 Willpower any time the character
activates the Relic
Benefit: A character with the bezoar sitting in his
stomach can teleport himself great distances depending
on how potent the stone happens to be (i.e. according
to dots purchased):
Dots
Range
100 ft.
500 ft.
One mile
One hundred miles
One parsec
The character must expend Willpower with every
usea number of Willpower per dot/distance used (so,
if the character wants to travel under 100 feet, only one
point is necessary, while between 200-500 feet would
necessitate two points, and so on).
The character expels the bezoar after a number of
hours equal to his Resolve + Stamina dice pool. And by
expel, we mean uncomfortably.
Vampires
System Shifts
Vampires have incredible power out in the abyssal maw of space. Consider: no sunlight (vampires are
burned by the sun that shines on Earth). No day-night
cycle. Not a lot of wood from which to make stakes.
And, finally, vampires dont need to breathe. They can
set foot outside a spaceship to do repairs without concern
and can wander happily onto the surface of a gaseous
planet (provided the temperature wouldnt sear them to
a crisp or freeze them to the ground). This doesnt mean
you cant (re)institute some weaknesses for space-faring
blood-suckers
A vampires vulnerability to sunlight is a supernatural one, not a biological one. So its up to you to
determine the nature of a vampires aversion to sun or
starlight. Is the vampire harmed only by the light of those
stars orbited by habitable planets (tying it to the vibrancy
of human life and how the sun sustains those naturally
living and burns those who are unnaturally undead)?
Is the vampire vulnerable to all starlight? Or, again, is it
only the light of our own sun that burns the vampire? If a
vampire is Embraced on a different planetor moon, or
stardockis he burned by the sun in that system only?
Consider too the nature of what happens when a
vampire enters the vacuum of space. Now, technically,
all the dramatic things you see in movies (exploding bodies, frozen lesh, eyes popping out of head, implosions)
wouldnt happen. But, hey, this is space opera, so have
fun with it. A vampires Vitae might freeze (meaning
13
VAMPIRES
it cannot be spent for one hour per minute of space

exposure). The vampire herself might start to seize up,
suffering a -1 Physical penalty per minute of exposure.
Or the vampire might simply start to accrue damage: her
undead flesh cannot suffer the rigors of the ever-hungry
vacuum and its icy teeth.
Blood, like food and water, is hard to ind out there

in the vacuum of space. Its for this reason that most vampires must remain close to the human herd to survive.
Some go wild and feral, hiding in the ducts and passages
of a darkened ship (think of the xenomorph from Alien,
except a slavering bloodsucker). Others have to up their
game in terms of aping human life and pretending to be
part of the herd instead of one of the wolves. Some
are pirates and slavers: they make raids on human ships,
plaguing distant space-lanes, thieving cargo and stealing
warm bodies to sustain them in the long trips between
planets and galaxies. Rumors even exist of vampires who
have whole farms of humans out there: distant outposts
where the humans are ensconced in tubes, made fat by
protein slurry and drained of their blood slowly enough

so that they always make more.
What happens if vampires become viable political
forces in the universe? As in, theyre no longer bound to
the Danse Macabre, and now engage in political battles
with human empires on potentially equal footing?
Daeva: Narcissistic spiders in the center of a cosmic
web, the Daeva are everywhere. Pleasure seekers. Pimps.
Dilettantes. Artistes. They rarely work with other Daeva
(the ego battles often end in clumps of blood and hair
stuck to the walls), but they cannot operate alone, either
(for who would appreciate their genius when designing a
new spacecraft or selecting the perfect harem brood for
a wealthy banker?).
Gangrel: When they show up on your space station,
everybody scatters. They are the wild-men. They are the
blood-beasts. They travel in packs. Sometimes they show
up to drink a couple blood-shots down at the vampire bar.
Sometimes they want information. But a lot of the time? They
want to hunt. They want to feed. And feed, they shall.
Mekhet: You dont find a Mekhet. The Mekhet find
you. Maybe they want information. Maybe they want to
14
give you information. Or worse, maybe they think youre a

it for one of their myriad cults cast across the stars. When
they grab you from the light and drag you into shadow,
will you scream? Or, like many, will you acquiesce?
Nosferatu: They build nests and warrens in the
bleakest, blackest parts of the universe. They lash
together garbage scows, derelict spacecrafts, satellite
arraysanything that will form their labyrinthine stardocks (or, as they call them, scumdocks) where they
trap and hunt prey for both food and amusement. Some
go to them unbidden, seeking enlightenment from the
blind worm-oracles floating out in the void.
Ventrue: They have consolidated powers and are
themselves a powerful political empirethe Vampire
Nation, the humans call them. They attempt to show
a less monstrous face, but everyone knows what goes on
in their blood-soaked moonbases
New Toy: Blood Propulsion (Devotion)

(Celerity , Resilience , Vigor )
Imagine it: a vampire is ejected into the cold maw of
space and just loats there. Nowhere to go but nowhere,
it seems. Unless, of course, the vampire could let fly with
a propulsive jet of blood to provide momentum
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: This power involves no roll to invoke.
Action: Instant
The character hisses and vomits a jet of Vitae from
her mouth, which offers her propulsion in the dark void
of space at Speed 1. The vampire can do this in normal
gravity and at normal oxygen levels as well, and can
even aim it with a Dexterity + Athletics + Celerity roll.
Alternately, the vampire can add in Crac if it is possessed
(replacing the Celerity in the roll), and by spending an
additional Vitae, turn the sprayed blood into hot, acidic
Vitae jet that does a number of points of lethal damage
equal to successes rolled. The spitting blood has a range
equal to the vampires Blood Potency in yards.
Werewolves
System Shifts
A werewolfs relationship to Luna is a critical

oneand in the far-flung reaches of space, an almost
non-existent one. Lunathe spirit presiding over the
moon that orbits Earth alonecan no longer gaze upon
her wild-hearted children from such a distant vantage,
and to many Forsaken that is a terrifying consideration.
What does this mean in terms of rules changes? First,
it means that Lunacy is less effective: all humans are
considered to have +2 Willpower when determining
Lunacy effects (p. 176, Werewolf: The Forsaken).
Second, determining an Auspice becomes well,

tricky. Assume that all Forsaken experience their First
Changes on Earth. Those who are destined to become
werewolves but do not change on Earth becomeyou
guessed itPure. And yes, this only conirms the Pure
greatly outnumber the Forsaken mode of the game, but
given space operas general parameters (oppressive majority versus rebellious minority), thats totally in-theme.
(Alternately, consider the possibility that werewolves
can bond with other lunar spiritsi.e. the patron or
matron spirits bound to other orbital moons. However,
you might want to reserve this for alternate shapeshifters,
like those found in War Against The Pure).
Preys Blood (p. 179, Werewolf: The Forsaken)
allows a werewolf to taste the blood of a foe and track
it with almost supernatural clarityyet that should still
necessitate a smell of the blood. So what happens to
this ability when a werewolf tracks prey across the gulf
of space? Normal tracking rolls do not apply, however,
by the tenets of Preys Blood, a werewolf may still attempt a Wits + Survival roll with a -5 dice pool. Seems
like an extreme penaltyuntil you realize that the
werewolf shouldnt even be able to make that roll in the
irst place. However, their tracking skills are genuinely
supernaturalwhy not catch a whiff of blood on the
solar winds, a coppery tang despite the thickness of the
hull, despite the vastness of the void?
What, then, is the Shadow? If youre comfortable with multiple cosmologies playing together, it can
remain separate from Between Space and still be exactly
as it is on Earth, except, well, in outer space and on
other planets. Forsaken still step sideways the same way
(Werewolf: The Forsaken, pp. 250-251), and yes, it still
requires one to be at a locus. Loci are still foci of spiritual
energy, and can be anything out in space: an asteroid
where a pleasure cruise crashed (killing all aboard), a
blood-soaked bunk on a derelict military battleship,
a gnarled and twisted tree at the heart of some forest
moon. If its actually out there in space, the Gauntlet is
truly low, granting werewolves +3 dice to the stepping
sideways roll. One modification: consider the possibility of allowing a werewolf packs spaceship to enter the
Shadow if the werewolves have a totem bound to the
ship (see below).
Alternately, if you care to combine cosmologies
for ease of use and memory, feel free to make Between
Space a cosmological combo-pack of the Underworld,
the Astral Realms, the Shadow, and any other interstitial plane you care to layer upon it.
Finally, a totem can be bound to a packs spacecraft
at a Totem point cost of one per dot spent in Spaceship
Size (p. 7). The totem can add its Attributes to the ship.
Its Power gets added to any attack rolls. Its Finesse gets
added to any piloting rolls. And inally, its Resistance is
15
/
VAMPIRES AND
WEREWOLVES
added to the ships Durability (at a 1:1 basis). The only

restriction is that the totems Ban should be in some way
related to the ship itself (a certain ritual performed on
board; the ship cannot enter atmosphere; the ship must
power down once a week and float inert in the blackness
of space; etc). More information on spacecraft in The
Infinite Macabre can be found on p. 6 of this product.
At its core, the essential mode of Werewolf is that

the charactersthe werewolvesare the guardians of a
broken world, a world under assault by alien spirits. This
can remain largely the same in terms of The Infinite
Macabre, except replace world with universe. To
create a more cosmic feel, dont hesitate to increase the
size of a packs territory: no longer talking about just a
few square miles of farmland, were asking what if a pack
guards a planetary ocean, an entire moon, a whole tract
of known space? Could they chase spirits across a parsec
littered with space debris and broken craft refuse? What
if theyre the lone shepherds of a moon under assault by
a tidal force of wretched hybridized spirits, as alien as
one could imagine?
We said it above, but it bears repeating: The Pure
can serve the role of The Empire. The Forsaken can it
the mold of the Rebel Alliance. Just sayin.
Also consider a Forsaken pack as the crew of a
starship. Look to the crew of Firefly and see how, despite
their dysfunction, they work together, and then model
a werewolf pack after that same dynamic. A pack works
togetherit must, or it will die. The crew of a star-faring
craft is much the same: everyone must be attuned to
the task at hand, to the ship around them, and to one
another. It can create an awesomeif claustrophobic
(in a good way) story experience. Then again, we also
think itd be cool to have a starship crew comprising one
each of the various types of supernatural denizen (Forsaken mechanic, changeling pilot, vampire diplomat,
Promethean weapons oficer, etc.).
What happens to the Forsaken tribes when you
thrust them into The Infinite Macabre shard?
Blood Talons: Berserkers and warrior-monks, the
Blood Talons rove far and wide following the scent of
battle: the universe is no stranger to war, and in every
corner of every rot-fuck planet or distant moon waits a
battle to be had. The Blood Talons find the battlefields,
be they terrestrial or cast across open space, and there
they move in on the side they choose as the Choosers
of the Slainand, when its all done, they ind those
grotesque spirits born of the carnage and end their aspirations for greater terror.
Bone Shadows: The galaxies are home to myriad
new spirits, all as alien as the worlds they call home. The
Bone Shadows go to these spirits to learn, to be submissive, and ultimately (and ironically) to master such
spiritual strangeness. Those who know of the Hirfathra
Hissu also know that they are powerful prognosticators
and, further, know where the most potent loci await.
Hunters In Darkness: The name is literal: these
wolves are the greatest trackers space has ever known,
and they will hound their prey across the blackest void.
And yet, they remain technologically unrefined: they are
simple, almost ascetic, requiring little more than their
fangs and claws to ind those enemies (spirits, Pure, Azlu)
that have wronged the Uratha.
Iron Masters: If anybody is attuned with their spaceships (and, even moreso, has a totem bound to the craft),
its the Iron Masters. Sure, some run bars on city-planets
and others set up garages on those waystation moons that
get a lot of passing traffic, but really? Most of them love
the gearhead nature of owning, piloting and repairing
their own spacecraft.
Storm Lords: Storm Lords are political entities.
They have to be; the universe is increasingly diced up
into troubling empires, and those empires spawn wars and
terror and crass diplomacy, and all of those things further
stir the spirits. And so the Storm Lords must involve
themselves. At least, thats what they tell themselves. It
surely cant because of the addictive nature of politics,
right? Or the taste of power it provides?
New Toy: The Lodge of The Strangers

Exodus (All Tribes)
The Forsaken do not belong. Not in space. Not on

ground. They are grotesque mutations of man and wolf,
with souls that lie somewhere in-between.
This lodge purports to put together those of the Uratha who feel truly like outcasts and freaksstrangers
to man and beast and spiritand exhorts all lodge
members to travel together into the harshest, strangest
regions of space.
The purpose of this exodus is twofold: first, to escape
the known universe and plague it no more; when a wolf
is too sick to live he goes elsewhere to die, and this is
like that to a degree. The Uratha do not belong to any
moon or planet and so they go seeking a place where
they do belong. Second, it is to speak to the most bizarre,
alien-like spirits out in deep space. By communing with
such entities, the Strangers hope to ind some kind of
understanding of their origins and conditionafter all,
inding a place where they do belong is more than just
mere physicality and geography. They seek a spiritual
place, as well.
16
Prerequisites: Wisdom , Crafts , Science

Membership: The lodge is open to any member of
any tribe, but they dont recruitthey wont come after
you. You have to go after them. And, since theyre rarely
easily accessible, inding and joining the lodge often requires quite a pilgrims journey across the known universe
in an effort to dig up the trail to follow.
Benefits: The Strangers of this lodge know that they
do best in strange places and when confronting truly
alien beings: any time a member of this lodge meets a
spirit type she has never before encountered, she may
add her dots in Wisdom to any Social dice pools used in
dealing with that spirit. Further, members of this lodge
feel quite at home with the Occult Skill (as that Skill
deals with the margins and fringes of knowledge)
when rolling a dice pool that uses the Occult Skill, the
werewolf can reroll all failed dice (once) by spending a
Willpower point.
Mages
System Shifts
In theory, mageslike vampiresind that their

supernatural abilities are opened up quite a bit by a
journey into outer space. In the setting of space opera,
the laws of reality are a little looser than youll find in
the standard World of Darkness setting (or in a harder
sci-i shard). Not only is science running rampant, thus
allowing a much wider variety of acceptable results, but
humanity is aware of magic to some degree, too (in much
the way that the denizens of the Star Wars universe knew
about the Force). Humans are far more willing to accept
the strange things they see because they know magic is
real and that true monsters travel the stars. So, what
does that mean for Paradox and vulgar magic? Consider
these three options:
No Change: Same rules apply. In the setting, of
course, mages are likelier to act outside the view of
Sleepers.
Paradox, Castrated: In the base Paradox dice pool
(p. 123, Mage: The Awakening), remove one die (to a
minimum of one).
Paradox, Eradicated: Paradox, begone. Get rid of
it entirely. In effect, because the belief in magic is so
widespread, the leash (or rather, safety valve) on magic
and those who use it is gone, thus giving them unparalleled powers in this age of space opera.
One of the great issues with traversing and colonizing outer space is the lack of breathable air (which often
goes hand-in-hand with a lack of flora and fauna, food
supply and clean fresh water). Mages might be able to

fix that, or at least help the process. Consider that terraforming potentially takes between ten and a hundred
years to make a moon or planet habitable by human
beings. (Now, in your space opera, it might instead be
something that can happen in the course of seven days if
you want itsome super-fast God Seed that dramatically transforms the planets surface.) Mages, though,
can accelerate the process. In fact, a relatively small
number of powerful sorcerers with capabilities across all
the Arcanum could literally create their own world
spawn oxygen, accelerate (and even direct) evolution,
create ecological diversity amongst plants, birth different
biomes, and so on and so forth. Thats scary powerful.
Worse, what happens when that group of mages decide
that they dont want to relinquish this place that they
built? What if they decide that they are the planets new
keepers? And overlords?
Mages are easily obsessed with the past and with
anything that registers as Atlantean. So it is that many
mages are deeply fascinated by the presence and origin of
the Stygian Gates, all of which seem to be marked with
Atlantean runes (both tiny and massive). What does
it mean? Many have posited that the so-called Dread
Doors were built by early oracles, perhaps indicated that
Atlantis was never on Earth and was always out here
somewhere. Some further suggest that if the gates could
be linked magically, they might create one big gate. And
that gate would either lead mages to Atlantis or lead
Atlantis back to this reality.
What about the Abyss? Sure, technically the Abyss
is the yawning gulf between the Supernal and the Fallen,
but outer space itself sure has an abyssal quality, does it
not? Is there a magical sympathy between the void of space
and the oblivion of the Abyss? Do Abyssal entities lurk
out there in the deepest darkest channels and forgotten
tableaus of space? What do mages think of what happens
when they go through a Stygian Gate? Is Between Space
even closer to the true Abyss? Do the deepest, maddest
Abyssal gods lurk in that interstitial void?
And what about the mage orders? How do they
fare in the space opera revamp?
The Adamantine Arrow: These mystic warriormonks are advisers to the many empires of man. They
advise them on matters of war and diplomacy, and
further, they train the princes and soldiers in whatever
martial way suits the students. And, when necessary,
the Arrow mages step onto the fields of war and wage a
campaign of battle magic against the enemies of their
empireeven if that means bringing magic to bear
against others in their order.
The Free Council: The universe is a swiftly-changing thing. How could it not be? If one mind is strong,
17
WEREWOLVES AND MAGES
what about a billion? Ten billion? A hundred billion,

across the stars? How wonderful if all those means were
bent toward enlightenment, toward the Awakening
of magic? But theyre not. Its the same as its always
been: war, petty squabbles, entrenched beliefs, extremism. The Free Council wants to change all that. They
dont like that the other mage orders contribute to the
oppression of magic and enlightenment (keeping it all
for themselves, the old Council heads say). And so,
they represent magical anarchists out on the galactic
fringes, freeing peoples minds (even if the people dont
want them freed).
Guardians of the Veil: If the Free Council consists
of magical anarchists, the Guardians comprise those
mages who think magic should be kept secret, practiced
only by an elite few. Frankly, theyre trying to put the
snakes back in the can because magic is already out
there, no longer secret. That doesnt stop them from
trying, thoughthink of them as a well-intentioned
secret police, tracking down those exploiting magic and,
well, punishing them.
The Mysterium: Those mages in the Mysterium are
equal part cosmic mystagogue and alien archaeologist. They believe that before mankind came out here to
colonize the stars, the stars had other inhabitants, maybe
as long as a million years ago. And, in fact, the Mysterium
accepts that those previous tenants may have been
the original Atlanteans. That means planet-hopping to
find any artifacts or writings that lend credence to this
theory and shine light on the original Atlantis. It also
makes the Mysterium the self-proclaimed expert on the
Stygian Gates. (And yes, if youre thinking, Gosh, this
puts them into serious competition or coordination with
the Loyalists of Thule, the Bone Shadows and maybe
even the Mekhet, you wouldnt be wrong.)
The Silver Ladder: The Free Council likes to claim
that the universe is home to magic, but thats bullshit.
The Silver Ladder knows the truth: mages are the ones
who keep the magic, and that puts mages in a particularly powerful position. And theyre happy to ascend to
their predestined rank as Rulers of Everything They See,
thank you very much. Mages of the Silver Ladder arent
content to serve as diplomats or strategists to the various
empires. No, theyd rather be the emperors. They deserve
to rule, and they can claim that rule easyas a result,
more than one empire, civilization, army or mega-corp
has a Silver Ladder sorcerer at its head.
New Toy:
Attuned Weapon (Merit; to )
Effect: Whether true or not, mages are considered

to be mannered and elegantchampions of old ways
and ancient methods. (The Free Council balk at this
suggestion, but it doesnt make it any less assumed.) As

such, many mages build their own Attuned Weapons:
melee-style hand-held weapons that reflect their magic
and speak to a time before photon repeaters and laserlancers.
Choose a melee weapon that best suits the characters persona (sword, knife, axe, spear, staff, etc.). The
character must have built this weapon herself (cut the
staff from an alien tree, hammered the meteor-forged
sword, chipping away volcanic moonstone to form a
glass-sharp knife).
The weapon must be attuned to one of the mages
Ruling Arcana (determined by Path, see p. 68, Mage:
The Awakening).
The weapon gains Damage (as attack bonus) equal
to the dots purchased in the Merit. Damage on these is
considered lethal regardless of the weapon (e.g., staves
do bashing normally, but an Attuned Staff does lethal)
unless a special effect below notes otherwise.
Further, the weapon also gains a special ability based
on the Ruling Arcanum:
Death: This weapon can be used to attack ghosts
(manifest or otherwise) directly. In addition, it gains +1
dice against vampire targets.
Fate: On a successful attack, roll a single die. If that
die comes up a 10, then double the damage done. If that
die comes up a 1, then the attack was successful, but only
does bashing damage. If it comes up 2-9, no effect takes
place beyond normal attack and damage resolution.
Forces: The mage can, once per scene, turn the
weapon into the embodiment of a particular force
(ire, lightning, light, etc.)this lasts for a number of
turns equal to the characters Gnosis score, and each
turn it does one bashing damage to the character while
it remains in her grip (this cannot be prevented with
protective gloves or other gear). However, during this
time the weapon does aggravated damage to targets.
Life: Once per game session, the mage can use this
weapon in a way opposite of its intent: to heal instead
of damage. Make an attack as normal, and successes
gained instead heal that number of points of lethal (or
bashing) damage. The weapon does not heal aggravated
damage.
Matter: The weapon ignores Durability as a factor
when making attacks on any material and inorganic
object. In addition, it gains +1 dice against Promethean
targets.
Mind: If the weapon makes a successful attack
on a sentient creature and does at least five points of
lethal damage, then the weapon also robs the victim
of one Willpower point and the point is transferred to
the mage.
Prime: If the weapon makes a successful attack on
a creature possessing Essence or Mana and does at least
18
three points of lethal damage, then the weapon also robs

the victim of one Essence or Mana point and the point is
transferred to the mage (Essence is transferred as Mana).
In addition, it gains +1 dice against Awakened targets.
Spirit: This weapon can be used to attack spirits
(manifest or otherwise) directly. In addition, it gains +1
dice against werewolf targets.
Space: If the mage makes a successful attack on
the target and draws blood, the mage may scrye into the
weapon at any point over the subsequent 24 hour period
and see the victim and her location (though the only
sense experienced is sight).
Time: The mage always goes first in Initiative. In
addition, it gains +1 dice against changeling targets.
Changelings
System Shifts
For the most part, the rules that govern changelings on Earth dont need to change much in terms of
putting the Lost into the space opera shard. However,
the Hedge merits serious consideration. The Hedge can

be opened as normal by any changeling going through
a portal or reflective surfaceand yes, that means a
supply closet on board a frigate, through a reflective
surface on a solar array, or in the trapdoor at the bottom
of a lunar ore harvester. The question becomes: where
does the changeling go when she enters? The Hedge,
yes, but what and where is the Hedge? If we reimagine
the Hedge as something that is less linear (i.e. walking
down a Hedge trod) and far more three-dimensional (a
spheroid maze where changelings can travel up, down,
or sideways through the labyrinth), we can then imagine that changelings in turn can take more than just
themselves in: they can take whole spacecraft inside to
navigate the tangle. ( This leads to images of faceless
hobgoblins leaping onto the wings of the ship, chewing through cables, throwing themselves bodily into
the engines.) This means that changelings can use the
Hedge to bypass Stygian Gates if they so desire: either
using the gates or even docking bay doors as pathways
into the Hedge. To determine how long the journey takes
in the Hedge, assume that the Navigation system on p.
19
MAGES AND CHANGELINGS
219 of Changeling: The Lost still applies, except now

the journey takes (in hours) 20 minus the Wyrd rating
rather than 10 minus Wyrd.
It might seem that Contracts require special
consideration, but for the most part, they should work
as designedits just that, some changelings are going
to be more comfortable on a planets surface rather than
floating out in the middle of space since the Contracts
of the Lost are so often attuned to natural features (elements, animals, sunlight). Thats not to say, however,
that a changeling couldnt have a dog or two on board a
spacecraft, or that its not valuable to be able to control
fire and temperature and grow plants on board a ship
in fact, in this way, changelings can become incredibly
useful on a long spacefaring journey. One question is:
do Contracts of Fang and Talon work if geared toward
alien fauna (or Contracts of Spring on xenomorphic
lora)? Well, why not? Even if theyre not terrestrial, why
put in place unnecessary limits? You might also want to
expand the Elemental Contracts to, say, Etheror even
the empty Void of space.
A changelings imprisonment by the True Fae

can be a whole different experience, now: what if the
Hedge is a ring of thorns surrounding an Arcadia planet,
a ring navigable by spacecraft? What if, when humans
are stolen away, they are dragged through rifts in time
and space (or Stygian Gates) and taken to this Arcadian
homeworld? Are the True Fae then not only iguratively
alien, but truly extraterrestrial? Could a characters story
involve a measure of planetary romance by falling in
forbidden love with her Keepera relationship denied
by the gulf of space after the character is unwittingly
freed? Hell, consider rethinking the entire majority
oppression, minority rebellion aspect of a lot of space
opera: what if the True Fae are the oppressors, and the
changelings represent an active rebellion looking to
rout and destroy their oneiric overlords (which further
complicates that planetary romance angle noted above,
giving it a Romeo & Juliet in-wartime feel).
Freeholds, the fundamental unit of larger Lost
society, can get a pretty serious space opera makeover:
a rebel lunar outpost, a fabricated village found on a
comet and held fast by a Contract with the comet itself,
an old cargo freighter thieved from its pilots. Freeholds
might communicate with one another via a Subspace
Frequency, a parsec-traversing signal (delayed by minutes
or hours depending on how far apart the freeholds happen to be) that allows changelings to warn one another
about the True Fae or coordinate attacks on the Keepers
or on enemy Courts.
Goblin Markets, too, are a new consideration.
Do they only exist in whatever version of the Hedge
you prefer (a Hedge planet, a ring of thorns surrounding the Arcadian homeworld, or the Hedge as it stands
in Changeling: The Lost)? Could you envision a solar
flotilla out at the edges of space or found somewhere in
Between Space?
Finally, consider revamping the nature of the
Courts. The Courts as they stand are seasonal, and space?
Space has no seasons. On the one hand, youre obviously
free to keep the Courts as seasonal, as some planets will
either still have seasons or will have one persistent season.
Example: a tropical jungle moon might make a great
Summer Court kingdom, whereas a Hoth-like Arctic
rock would make an ideal place for the gloomy palaces
of the Winter Court. However, dont hesitate to get all
space opera on its ass, either: what about Courts based off
of celestial objects? The Court of the Comet, the Aurora
Court, the Court of the Dead Star, the Court of the Void.
This can work with the various noble entitlements, too:
Knights of the Supernova, the Bishops of Occultation,
the Royal Guardians of the Ring of Dust.
And what of the seasonal Courts (if youre keeping
them), cast in the dim light of The Infinite Macabre:
The Spring Court: Think of them as hedonistic
galaxy-crossing Johnny Appleseedstromping across
the planets and moons, looking for places to plant their
seeds both figuratively and literally. Theyre terraforming freaks, drug-addled tricksters, and sex-addict space
hipsters. They dont care what you want. They care about
what they want, and thats it.
The Summer Court: The Summer Court cares little
about the ways of manthey are warriors and soldiers,
yes, but they dont involve themselves in mortal disputes
or territorial pissing matches. Their armies march for the
Lost, and the Lost alone. As such, the Summer Court
carves out its own domains across the galaxyforest
moons, sun-baked space stations, distant islands on distant planetsto call their own. They offer protection
to any who join with them: joining merely means a stint
in the Summer Courts military service.
The Autumn Court: The universe knows no fear,
it seemsit continues to expand ever-outward, mankind
moving with the aggressiveness of an untreated disease.
Its as if man is ignorant to the dangersnot just the
dangers the stars offer, such as solar flares or supernovas, but the monsters that lurk out there in the velvet
blackness. What of the True Fae and their homeworld, a
planet that never shows up on any star-charts or surveys,
a planet yet with its own kind of mad gravitygravity
that reaches out with invisible hands to clutch at those
whom the Fae want to bring to heel. The Autumn Court
serves to remind the universe that monsters exist by
being monsters themselves: they are but a taste of the
terror, a vaccine for mankinds unchecked spread. That is
not to say they form an oppressive empire: no, even the
20
worst civilizations have a lot to fear from the Autumn

Court. They are equal opportunity nightmares.
The Winter Court: The Winter Court, like their
Autumnal counterparts, recognizes that the universe
is filled to the brim with horrorsbut their response is
entirely different. Instead of acting as bellwether and
warning system, the Winter Court escapesand this
universe is home to many hidden, forbidden and forgotten places. The Winter Courtiers lee to the farthest
corners and there play out their mad games and courtly
intrigue, becoming insular and inbred (metaphorically
and literally) until some clash or crisis kicks over the log
and drags them back out into the light. For while many
places remain hidden in the universe, all of them can
still be found by the most resolute True Fae (or humans,
or Autumn Court, or whomever).
New Toy:
Dolls Heart Driveshaft (Token; )
Peel back the metal door encasing the engine of a

changeling crews starship, and what might you find?
You might find a creepy marionette or plastic doll wired
up to the drive, thats what. And what does this doll do,
exactly? Well, it takes the spaceship and literally, in
the span of an instant, drops it out of space and into the
Hedgewhere it promptly becomes a Hollow. (The dots
in the Spaceship Merit must be respent as Hollow dots
while the ship remains in that form.)
Action: Instant
Mien: The doll wired to the heart of the ship is alive:
squirming, writhing, babbling, screaming.
Drawback: First, the shiponce it becomes a Hollowcannot re-engage and emerge as a ship again for a
full 24 hour period. And when it does, it doesnt teleport
anywhere; it must literally ly free of the Hedge through
some gateway or door big enough to accommodate a
ship. Second, the shift from outer space to Hedge
is one that sends up all manner of signalssignals that
may summon strange hobgoblins, demented changelings
or mad Keepers.
Catch: The changeling must have burned her hand
(for one or more lethal damage) somewhere on the ship
during the previous eight hours.
Prometheans
System Shifts
Prometheans have a sympathy with Between

Space. While in the Dismal Void, the Promethean gains
+3 dice to resist Torment, and can reduce the cost of
activating any Bestowment by one point of Pyros (minimum of zero cost).
You might consider upping the milestone Vitriol

awards for Promethean characters walking the Pilgrimage: after all, tracking ones humanness is all the
more dificult across the deep channels of space (where
humans sometimes fear to tread). Adjustment neednt be
dramatic: minor milestones are 1-5 Vitriol, major 5-10,
superlative 10-15.
Consider the possibility that the alchemy once put

forth by various Demiurges to bring life to dead lesh (i.e.
creating a Promethean) is actually alien alchemy, as
in, the inspiration for such creation on Earth came from
the alien astronauts that once landed in Ancient Egypt.
This also means that new methods of such extraterrestrial
alchemy could lurk out there for those mortals or Prometheans who are intrepid enough to find them.
File this under Idea That Totally Wont Go Horribly Awry, but what would happen if the Prometheans
actually had their own moon or planet to call their own?
(Hell, call it Prometheusapropos given how often
the names of planets are cast after mythic igures.) No
humans around, so no Disquiet. Branded throngs, ahoy.
What could possibly go wrong? (Whats that? You say
its a planet full of rage-filled monsters who long to be
human?) Is it too abstract to suggest that so many Prometheans could somehow imbue the moon or planet
itself with a kind of sentience and life? A reanimated
Promethean planet broadcasting its mad signal into
space? A signal that draws Disquiet from hundreds of
parsecs away and captures passing ships in a tractor beam
of pure disdain and simmering suspicions?
Clones, a relative rarity in the World of Darkness,
could be a lot more common in The Infinite Macabre.
Clones are capable of manning spacecraft or acting as
redundant failsafesor, as weve seen already, they might
be used to populate a moon-based mining operation or
even act as a whole army of soldiers for an oppressive
galactic regime. This could thrust clones into the light
as either a major enemy for Promethean characters or it
could put them front and center as playable characters.
If you want a little survival horror mixed in with
your space opera, look no further than the Centimani or
Pandorans. Play a game like Dead Space and tell me that
the pink, gibbering mutants in that game couldnt easily
be something ripped out of the pages of Promethean:
The Created.
New Toy: Capacitor (New Electrification

Transmutation; )
The Created with this Transmutation can control

and sense all aspects of a spaceship from within merely
by touching some part of it.
21
PROMETHEANS
Cost: 2 Pyros
Dice Pool: None
Action: Instant
Activating the Transmutation requires the Promethean to touch the spacecraft (from within or outside). The spacecraft gains power if it had none before.
Further, the Promethean can pilot the ship, make attacks
or even make repairs (see the Spaceship Merit, p. 7 of this
product) without being near to the controls of those systems. Finally, the Promethean can take a turn and sense
the goings-on within the ship, attaining all five senses as
if the character is the craft. (This requires no roll.)
Sin-Eaters
System Shifts
Gaining plasm might be a little bit harder in The

Infinite Macabre given a Sin-Eaters propensity to spend
time in space in transit from world to world, so consider
using Dead Spots: out there in the deep nowhere are

spaces that are not only physical voids but spiritual voids,
too. These are places where stars burned out or where
ships died in the emptiness and the crew withered away
to nothing. These places are home to ghosts both human
and alien, and wise Sin-Eaters can use these out-in-thevoid haunts to collect plasm from these low places.
The Infinite Macabre demands a potential rewiring of the Underworld as its written in Geist: The
Sin-Eaters (Appendix starting on p. 258). First, assume
the Underworld is no longer entirely autochthonic
meaning, it has a surface, and above it, a sky (The
Allochthonous Skies). And above that sky is the
wide open nothing of Between Space (aka the Dismal
Void). Second, assume that every physical body that is
or has been home to human beings has a representation in Between Space: moons, space stations, planets,
asteroid outposts, etc. Third, if it has a representation
in Between Space, it also has its own Underworld. Just as
the Underworld on Earth represents the shades of that
place, so does every netherworld of every planet, moon
22
and stardock. (And it bears considering exactly what the

Underworld of these places look like: the Underworld of
a stardock might very well look like the claustrophobic
halls of any Doom video game, where the netherworlds of
other planets would represent the dead cultures of those
civilizations that dwelled there.) Finally, it should be
possible for a character to leave one Underworld by going deep enough (meaning, into the Lower Mysteries)
and emerging into another Underworldwhich means,
yes, a character could enter the Underworld on Earth
and reemerge onto, say, the planet Corvus (through its
Underworld) some 10,000 light years away without ever
venturing into outer space. Sin-Eaters can use Avernian
Gates (per normal) on any body or structure that has its
own Underworld.
The geists themselves should be thought of in

those space operatic terms while still retaining that
archetypal sensibility: the Suffocated Cosmonaut, the
Dead Knight of the Black Comet, the Impaled Pilot,
the Lunar Miner.
What to do about ghosts? Consider that the
universe is probably full of them. In space opera, massive
battles unlike any seen on Earth can unfold. Sometimes,
entire civilizations and planets are wiped out with singlestroke mega-weapons (think the way the Death Star
obliterates Alderaanin fact, just as the Force hears
all those voices crying out, so too might Sin-Eaters
feel such a deathly disturbance across space). You have
plenty of excuse to populate the stars and planets and
dead dreadnaughts with as many ghosts as you so choose.
In fact, being so far out there probably makes it a lot
easier for specters to manifest and affect human beings:
faces at the portholes, engines dying suddenly, wraiths
traveling alongside the ship like pale worms instead of
porpoises. However, if you feel like you want to open up
the Sin-Eater purview a little, feel free to add spirits to
their resume, alongside ghosts. It isnt entirely without
sense given that geists are so archetypal that they arent
ghosts so much as the spirits of ghosts. Why not assume
that Sin-Eaters straddle two worlds, making them an
easy ally for the Forsaken?
New Toy: The Meteor Mask (Deathmask)
Deathmask, the Forgotten (Death by Chance)

Key: Industrial
Skill: Drive (Pilot)
This maska porous mask forged of volcanic rock,
peppered with glittering gems where the eyes and teeth
should beis the face of the Last Colonist, a geist whose
entire moon colony was destroyed by a rogue asteroid.
The Last Colonist did not die with the others, as he was
underground in the mines at the time. When he emerged,
he found that his family and friends were all gone. He
was trapped, because the meteor had also destroyed
any chance of getting off the colony, and over time he
perished. When he was left as a lingering ghost, he absorbed all the roaming specters of those who had died,
and together as one they wandered the rock, gathering
glittering gems and stones with compulsive fervor.
When the Sin-Eater dons this mask, the machines
around him run silently and effectivelyno machine
within 50 yards will break completely (unless destroyed
actively by the changeling).
Possessed Starships
If cars and airplanes have spirits, you can be damn
sure that starships do, too. They arent content
to sit and wait in dry-dock. They long to be out
there. Its what they are, what they do. Regular
maintenance keeps them docile and content,
while a crew that develops an affection for their
ship may ind that sometimes the craft helps
them out. The engines may kick in just at the right
moment, or a short-circuit lickers brightly to
illuminate something terrible in the dark cargo
hold. Crews (or krewes, if youre playing with SinEater characters) treating such a vessel with a lack
of respect may ind increased injury rates or that
their navigation system is always pointing them
just off course.
In game terms, benign spirits get to add their
Power score to any Skill checks made using ship
systems, while malevolent entities apply Power
as a penalty to Skill checks. Of course, really
pissed-off spirits can do a lot worse. Any spirit
that unpleasant might just switch off gravity and
life support and lush the lesh contagion out into
space. Exorcising a starship computer may not
the ships chaplains normal duty, but its perhaps
the best time to have a priest on board.
Other things can take control of ships, too.
Ghosts of dead crewmates or living individuals
with particularly powerful supernatural abilities
can cause hair-raising horror in space. It only takes
a few adjusted systems to turn a starship to into a
cofinif youre in the piracy game, this can make
it easy to acquire new vessels.
23
SIN-EATERS
The Other:
Playing an Alien
in the World of
Darkness
Your flesh shimmers. Its iridescent, like the

mirrored flesh of a lizard. Your hands? Each
finger tapers to a whipping tendril (like the
tongue of a hummingbird). Your eyes dont exist;
you see by cobbling together an unholy host
of stimulisound, light, heat, smells. And
thats a good thing, too, because you can hear
blood pulsing through human hearts. You can
smell the sweat of their fear. Feel the warmth
of flesh even at 50 yards. It makes you hungry.
You want to crack open that poor dumb meatbag
and savor the juices. But you dont. Not now.
That would be rude. And your people are very
polite. At least, they are until nobodys look
ing
From Darkest Space,

You Appear
You have always played The Other.
As a vampire, you are held fast to the darkness, and
kept to the fringes by your cold hands and the hot blood
in your mouth.
As a mage, you know things others do not, can
perform tricks that could crumple someones mind like
a soda can under a heavy boot.
As a werewolf, you are a creature straddling worlds,
equal parts spirit, animal, and man.
Thats not even talking about Sin-Eaters, hunters,
Prometheans or fae creatures.
You havent seen anything yet.
This portion of The Infinite Macabre is devoted
toward letting you roleplay an alien being. Technically,
this is meant to be kept with the setting and themes
of The Infinite Macabrespace opera as a concept is
comfortable with the pulpier elements and motifs that
best suit an alien character. That said, if you are inclined
to take characters built from this section and put them
in your modern-era World of Darkness game, go for
it. The only person who can stop you is the Storyteller.
(Alternately, the rules in here could easily be used to
create Nightbreed-style monster types, too, provided you
extract out any of the space opera trappings.)
To be clear, most of this section is geared toward the
rules and character creation necessary to play an alien
creature in The Infinite Macabre. Were getting down

and dirty: here are the rules and as many examples as we
can cram into the gaps. Everything else is up to you.
Step One: Choose Concept
Determining the direction youll take in creating

an alien character is almost as difficult as being asked,
What do you want to do when you grow up? The
answers are, of course, limitlessbut hopefully with
a little thought youll be able to zero in on the type of
alien you might want to play within the boundaries of
The Infinite Macabre. Haughty power-mad diplomat?
Flesh-hungry moon-born berserker? Disgruntled robot?
Emotionless jellyish-like bladder of toxic gas and telepathic communication? You have no end to the choices
you may make.
Step Two: Select Attributes

Choose Attributes in much the same way you would
choose them for a starting human character.
Step Three: Select Skills
Same with Skills: while its possible that aliens might

not technically possess the same Skill sets as human beings, in the mode of The Infinite Macabre space opera,
aliens still have humanoid qualities. An alien can hack
a computer, canvass a party, or stab you with a pointy
implement.
Step Four:
Select Skill Specialties
Choose three Skill Specialties for any Skills your

alien character possesses.
Step Five:
Add Alien Template
The alien template is a simple one: it is composed of
Qualities, which are the elements that define your alien
species. It is up to you whether or not these Qualities
are meant to be singular to your alien character or representative of his entire alien species.
As with Skills and Attributes, you must prioritize
the categories for your alien characters Qualities. Except
here, you gain an additional category: Physical, Mental,
Social, and Cultural.
You do not need to put these in the same order that
you applied to either Skills or Attributes.
24
In each category, depending on the order you give it,

you gain a number of dots to spend across various alien
Qualities apropos to that category.
Primary earns you ive dots.
Secondary earns you three dots.
Tertiary earns you two dots.
Quaternary earns you one dot.
Note that purchasing Imperfections (below) can earn
you up to an additional five dots to spend in Qualities,
and these dots are not bound to any one category.
Your Awesomeness Trumps

Our Awesomeness
True fact: anything you come up with is probably
going to be cooler than anything we come up
with, especially in how well it lies at your game
table. The Qualities found in this chapter do not
need to be the end-all be-all list; they are not
meant to be exhaustive. Make up your own. Note
that dot costs are higher when the Quality offers
a larger beneit. You should work with the Storyteller and the other players not only to come up
with interesting abilities, but also to determine the
appropriate dot levels.
Physical Qualities
Bodiless ()
The character has no body. How you interpret that
is up to you: is he a cloud of vapor? A purely telepathic
entity? A spirit of sorts, kept only to the Shadow of the
galaxy? Does his gaseous form lie trapped in some kind
of tank? However you determine it, the character has no
body to speak of and thus is given over to no Physical
existence.
What does this mean? First, it means no Physical
Attributes or Skills. Cross them off the sheet. It also
means: no Physical advantages. The character has no
Size. It has a Speed equal to Resolve + Composure. Initiative is equal to Intelligence + Wits. This may not seem
like a Quality (meaning, a beneit) until you recognize
that the character is virtually indestructible: while it
may make no Physical attacks, it also suffers no Physical
attacks. Swing a vibrating blade through the character
andwhat? Nothing. No damage done.
The character has no Health score and instead tracks
damage through Willpower. Choose one weakness from
this list (or make up your own with Storyteller approval):
fire, cold, radiation, steam, or electricity. This is the only

source of pain the character may suffer: it does damage,
but instead of causing wounds, it subtracts Willpower.
If the character is reduced to zero Willpower, then the
character suffers a -5 penalty on all rolls until at least
one point of Willpower can be restored.
Chameleon ()
The characters flesh is capable of shifting colors and
manifesting iridescence: as such, the skin can blend in
with most backgrounds provided the character can wait
for a single turn to manifest the skin-shift. The simpler
the background, the more effective the camouflage happens to be: if the background is uncomplicated (a forest,
a brick wall, a rock face) then any attempts to actively
search for the character suffer a -5 penalty. If the background features unusual complexities (a poster on the
wall, other characters, bundles of wires or other manmade
intricacies) then that penalty drops to -3. Further, the
character may not move during this time: the skin does
not change to keep up. Finally, if the character is wearing
clothes or objects then the penalty to ind the character
drops by one more (to -4 or -2, respectively).
Other characters must be actively hunting for the
character in order to see the chameleon: passive witnesses will fail to see anything strange at all regardless of
the circumstances. Finally, darkness helps the chameleon
skin adapt: darkness keeps the penalty at -5 regardless
of the background complexity and whether or not the
character is wearing clothes.
Covered in Cilia ()
The characters lesh is covered in small (or large,
if youre so inclined) ciliaor, to be more descriptive,
whipping tendrils. The character may choose a +1
bonus at the time of character creation to either Initiative, Defense, or Speed due to the tiny energy generated
by the constant movement of her cilia.
Does Not Breathe ()
Oxygen? Who needs oxygen? Certainly not you.
You gain life-giving sustenance from other sources:
perhaps you are driven merely by the kinetic energy of
your bodily processes. Whatever the case, you can walk
on the exterior of a ship, you can wander underwater for
hours on end, or you can waltz into a cloud of toxic gas
because you do not breathe.
Gazing Across the Spectrum ()
The characters vision offers him a myriad of perception tweaks via gazing across multiple spectrums. He
is able to gain visual input across infrared, ultraviolet,
and thermal sight, compositing it with his normal mode
of vision. This offers him a +3 on all Perception-based
rolls.
25
PLAYING AN ALIEN
Human-Seeming ()
Perhaps the character is a synthetic humanoid or,
rather, just a really weird distant offshoot of humankind
(with some frighteningly close genetic parity to humanity, perhaps within one percent). Either way, the character can pass as human more easily. Any rolls made to
pretend to be human gain a +3 bonus. Genetic testing
will reveal the truth.
Mucuslesh ()
The alien flesh exudes a greasy, sticky, or mucuslike discharge at all times. It is therefore very difficult
to grapple the character: any grapple attempts against
this alien character suffer a -5 penalty.
Natural Armor ( to )
Hard reptilian scale? Chitinous exoskeleton, like
that of a tremendous mantis or beetle? Dense-woven
nano-iber made to replace ones existing skin? Whatever
the case, the characters skin is hard enough to provide
the benefits of armor. The character gains one dot of
armor (both against bashing and lethal sources) per dot
purchased in this Physical Quality.
Vicious Body Parts ( to )
The character has a body part which does lethal
damage equal to one die per dot purchased. Could be
that this is some kind of violent mouthpart (a piercing
proboscis), ichorous claws, or razor-sharp serrated ins
along ones forearm.
Mental Qualities
Empath ()
The character is able to, by expending a Willpower
point, gaze upon the swirling aura of another character
(alien or human), and determine the targets current
dominant emotional state. The character may receive a
single aura color or a hypnotic mix of colors (indicating
greater emotional complexity). Consult the sidebar on
this page to see a sample of aura colors and their accordant emotional states. Note that aliens that possess
no emotions fail to register any kind of aura signifier.
If the character wishes to view the aura of a different
target, an additional Willpower point is required per
aura examined.
Non-Linear Thought Patterns ()
Human beings tend to think logically and linearly:
man is a problem solver that moves from Point A to
Point B and so on. Alien minds and brains neednt be
so forthright and may solve problems and puzzles more
comprehensively, or even backwards. The character
gains the 8-Again quality on the following Skills: Academics, Computer, Investigation, Occult, and Science.
Aura Signiiers
Condition
Color
Afraid
Orange
Aggressive
Purple
Angry
Bright Red
Bitter
Brown
Calm
Light Blue
Compassionate
Pink
Conservative
Lavender
Depressed
Gray
Desirous/Lustful
Deep Red
Distrustful
Light Green
Envious
Dark Green
Excited
Violet
Generous
Rose
Happy
Vermilion
Hateful
Black
Idealistic
Yellow
Innocent
White
Lovestruck
Bright Blue
Obsessed
Bright Green
Sad
Silver
Spiritual
Gold
Suspicious
Dark Blue
Confused
Mottled, shifting colors
Daydreaming
Sharp, lickering colors
Supernaturally Controlled Weak, muted aura

Psychotic
Hypnotic, swirling colors
Supernatural Being
A vague, indescribable
wrongness to the aura
Further, the Unskilled penalty is reduced from -3 dice

to -1 die.
Skill Focus ( to )
The species focuses a great deal of mental energy on
a single Skill. This Skill neednt be bound to the Mental
26
category (rather, the Mental nature of this Quality is

born of the intense mental discipline necessary to train
such a Skill so completely). For each dot purchased in
this Quality, you may choose another Skill Specialty for
the chosen Skill at the time of character creation. This
Quality may not be taken twice.
Tech Brain ( to )
Choose either the Computer Skill or the Crafts
Skill. The character gains a series of bonus dice at the
beginning of each game session equal to twice the dots
purchased in this Quality. The character may expend
these dice over the course of the game session on the
Skill for which they were chosen. She can, if she possesses them, add more than five dice to a single roll. The
character may be a robot, possess hard-wired synapses, or
may just be an alien with a keen technical mind.
Telepathic ( or )
Vocalized speech is not absolutely necessary for
every alien species: many are capable telepaths, able to
communicate directly with the minds of others (two-dot)
and read the surface thoughts of targets (four-dot).
The two-dot version offers the character a one-way
avenue of communication: she can, with no roll, talk to
another characters mind. She cannot, however, hear
their communication that comes backagain, its a
one-way street. To gain two-way communication, the
character must upgrade to the four-dot version. This
Quality allows the character both modes of telepathy.
She can hear the surface thoughts of others if they
will it to be so. If they, however, are not actively willing
their thoughts to be heard by the character, then such
telepathy constitutes a kind of mental theft and requires
a roll of Wits + Larceny (many have compared to, quite
literally, picking a lock) versus the opponents Resolve
+ Composure. If the alien character succeeds, she can
hear any and all surface thoughts from the target for the
remainder of the scene. She cannot, however, go deeper
than surface; think of it like a radio. One can tune in
only to active frequencies, but one cannot use tune in
transmissions from the past.
Thought Into Action ()
The alien is an eminently fast thinker, and this
translates into a fast actor. The character calculates
Initiative differently than human beings: instead of
Dexterity + Composure, the equation is now [Highest
of Wits or Intelligence] + Composure.
Social Qualities
Beast Whisperer ( or )
The character can implicitly understand the language of animals: a creature that barks, meows, caws,
or makes any vocal noise at all, is saying something. The

alien can understand whatever that may be without any
roll. It is in part a matter of inflection, but its also an
issue of body language. For an additional dot (), the
character can carry this over to her dealings with humans
and aliens who do not speak her tongue: she may make a
Wits + Empathy roll in order to understand the general
meaning of what another character is saying, even if she
doesnt understand their exact tongue.
Lyrical Voice ()
The aliens tongue and vocal chords (or vocal spiracles or spore-voice or whatever it is that allows the creature to speak) provides a beautiful, melodic sound. The
cost to purchase dots in the Presence and Manipulation
Attributes as well as the Expression, Persuasion, Socialize
and Subterfuge Skills are all halved (round up).
Pheromones ( to )
The characters body exudes hard-to-detect pheromones that can affect the emotions of others. For each
dot in this Quality the character may choose one overarching emotion (anger, love, hate, fear, compassion,
lust, sadness, etc.) and, with a Presence + Persuasion
roll (which is also granted a +3 bonus) affect all those
around her (within a 10 feet radius) with that emotion.
Characters may actively attempt to resist feeling this
emotion with a Resolve + Empathy roll, but can only
do so if they believe themselves actively manipulated.
If they feel that the emotion is a natural response, they
are not granted the option to resist until they gain some
clue about the pheromonal manipulation.
Seductive ( or )
Sex is a critical part of this aliens habits, a casual
component that is as fundamental as breathing, sleeping,
or eating. The two-dot version of this grants the character
a bonus to all Seduction rolls by allowing her to add both
Presence and Manipulation to the roll to seduce (Seduction
as an action is described on p. 84 of the World of Darkness
Rulebook). The four-dot version allows the character to
bear fruit from her seductiveness: if she successfully has sex
with another character, she gains a measure of authority
over that individual. She gains a +3 bonus on all Social
rolls made to sway that characters actions or emotions.
This bonus fades at a rate of one die per week but may be
re-established with further sexual contact.
Soothe the Beast ()
No animal (or animalistic, non-sentient alien) will
attack the character. It could be something physiological
(a sweet-smelling sap exuded by the lesh) or something
altogether ethereal (a calming aura). Either way, no
animal will attack the character unless the character
attacks first.
27
ALIEN QUALITIES
Without Emotion ()
The aliens physiology and brain chemistry does not
allow for pesky emotions to get in the way of social
interactions. As such, its very difficult to affect the
character in a social, emotional way. Social rolls against
the character (such as an Intimidation roll to scare her
or a Persuasion roll to appeal to her compassion) suffer a
-3 penalty, and Empathy rolls suffer a -5 penalty if trying
to read her current state of mind. Note, however, that
some rolls may still work on logic: an Intimidation or
Persuasion roll can be based on logic rather than emotion
(appealing to, say, data or knowledge). The Storyteller
can rule that such rolls do not suffer the penalty.
Cultural Qualities
Child of the Stars ()
The characters culture was born amongst the stars:
not on a planet but quite literally in space. They are
a star-faring race whose civilization remains bound to
the infinite emptiness, perhaps traveling in a massive
fleet of starships, as a part of a stardocks culture, or possibly belonging to a cobbled together empire of floating
space junk. Characters born of this culture ind a deep
sympathy with any kind of space-faring vehicle. Crafts
rolls made on starcraft (or any tech related to starcraft)
do not gain any bonuses directlybut the character
gets, once per game session, the chance to re-roll any
failed dice on those Crafts rolls. Further, the character
may buy more such chances at a cost of one Willpower
point per re-rolled failures. Note that this doesnt mean
the character discards successes and re-rolls the entire
dice pool. The character keeps successes and may re-roll
those dice that rolled as failures.
Competitive Species ()
The characters culture thrives on Darwinian competition: survival of the fittest determines anything from
breeding rights to royalty. As such, the character is a
keen competitor, and gains a +3 bonus to any contested
(non-relexive) action.
Diplomatic Species ()
Itd be easy to dismiss these aliens as weak and acquiescing, what with their almost religious devotion to
diplomacy and compromise, but some might wisely see
that being the arbiter of such compromise actually grants
one a small but not insignificant measure of power. This
aliens culture gains power from solutions: anytime the
character successfully negotiates a compromise of sorts
(perhaps but not necessarily resulting from a contested
Social roll), the alien gains a point of Willpower.
Hive Mind ()
The characters species or culture is built off of a
hive mindall members of the race are connected. This
Quality confers a number of beneits. First, all characters
within the same species may communicate telepathically
if they choose to. Second, the character may spend a
Willpower point to gain a Skill she does not normally
possess from another of her species provided that the
other character a) is within sight and b) possesses the
Skill. (The character gains the Skill at the same number
of dots as the target.) Finally, the character may share
wounds with her species mates by touching them: she can
give away a single point of damage (bashing or lethal) to
another of her kind (provided the other accepts it; she
may not force it upon them).
Logical Species ()
The culture from which the character comes eschews
religion and may even look down on art, literature, and
other forms of non-logical expression. Logic and science
are kings to the members of this culture or species, and
this confers a specific benefit: upon character creation
the character may take one additional Attribute dot in
the Mental category and three additional Skill dots in
the Mental Skill category.
Pilgrim Culture ( to )
The characters culture is driven by the journey,
not by the destination. They may not even have a
centrally located civilization and instead may be cast
across the stars. For each dot purchased in this Quality
the player may create a goal for the character that serves
as a waypoint of sorts along the characters pilgrimage.
Any time the character fulfills this goal, the character
gains 10 experience points (and then removes one dot
from this Quality until it goes to zero). Note that the
goals should not be easy to accomplish (Id like to sing
a song!) but should be monumental (Id like to visit
the most distant planet in the universe and find out if
life ever existed there). However, the goals should not
be impossible, either. The Storyteller should have input
as to the characters goals and should approve or deny
them as necessary.
Warlike Species ()
The aliens civilization is one steeped in the art of
war: they are in a constant stage of violent agitation,
either internally (civil war) or externally (against other
alien species or empires). This Quality earns the alien
a number of beneits. First, the alien may take a fourth
Skill Specialty at character creation that must be applied
to one of the following Skills: Athletics, Brawl, Firearms,
Weaponry, or Intimidation. Second, the character may
28
choose one weapon at which she is proficient. Attacks

made using this chosen weapon type (for example: photon blasters, rip-swords) gain no direct bonus but instead
possess an amped-up bonus based on Willpower expenditure: instead of gaining +3 for a Willpower point spent,
the attack roll gains +5 dice instead. The character may
never change this association with the type of weapon
chosen at character creation: her culture breeds it into
her species at a very young age.
War-torn ( or )
The characters civilization has been torn apart
by war and strife. While this is not itself a Quality, the
result of it certainly is: it makes the character part of a
tougher, heartier breed. The two-dot version grants the
character the 8-Again quality on any Survival rolls. The
four-dot version includes that benefit and also grants the
character an additional dot of Health.
Choose Imperfections
Any imperfections you choose from the list below
grant you an additional dot of Qualities that may be
spent in any Quality category. As always, this list is not
exhaustive and you should feel comfortable creating your
own if this list doesnt have what youre looking for.
Frail Body
The characters physical body is weak. Perhaps her
bones are hollow or her flesh is translucent and easily
torn. Some aliens are simply not physically robust, as
evolution has taken them down a different path from
humankind. As such, the characters Health score is
igured only by that characters Size. Stamina does not
figure into the equation.
Spatial Discomfort
The character is comfortable either on the ground
(planetside) or in the stars (out on a spacecraft or walking
on a stardock). Maybe its because thats where the alien
was raised, or maybe because the character experienced
some manner of trauma on the ground or in the stars.
Choose ground or stars. If the character is comfortable on
the ground, then whenever he walks among the stars he
suffers a -3 penalty to all Mental rolls and a -1 penalty to
all Social rolls. If the character is comfortable among the
stars, then the reverse is true: the penalties are applicable
when he walks on terrestrial ground.
Small In Stature
The character is from a species that is smaller than
most other creatures: Size 3 instead of the normal Size
5. This translates to a reduced Health track, but it also
lowers the species factor in terms of determining Speed
(species factor of 3 instead of 5).
Strange Requirements
Sure, humans like air to breathe, water to drink, and
a sandwich to eat. Aliens dont necessarily have the same
simple requirements. That alien over there? He breathes
nitrogen. The one next to him? Has to sleep every night
in red Martian dirt or he wakes up restless and haunted
by nightmares (gaining no Willpower upon waking).
The shadowy, trembling thing in the corner? Its like a
vampire, except, you know, not dead: it needs blood to
live. This Imperfection will require a little design on
the part of player and Storytellerwhat happens if the
requirement isnt met? Damage? Dice penalty? Reduced
Willpower? Derangement? It shouldnt be so serious that
the character cannot exist in the game without serious
repercussions, but it shouldnt be a stress-free problem,
either.
Vulnerability
Choose a substance. This substance now hurts the
Hell out of your character by doing aggravated damage.
The substance should be something that isnt incredibly
common (oxygen) but isnt so super-rare that it will fail
to ever come into play (dust from a supernova star).
Think of how werewolves are harmed by silver or how
vampires are vulnerable to fire. Other options might
include radiation, below-zero temperatures, electricity,
iron, lead, water.
Step Six: Choose Merits
Given that aliens in this game mode can be as humanoid as you so choose, feel free to purchase any Merits
that make sense (provided the Storyteller agrees).
You have one exception: you may purchase Size with
Merit dots. You can go up one point of Size by spending
two Merit dots. (This allows for alien races that are not
of humanoid stature.)
Step Seven:
Determine Advantages
Now its time to determine the inal Advantages for

your alien character. The standard Advantages are calculated as normal unless otherwise noted by the Qualities
purchased for your character.
It is up to the Storyteller to determine whether or
not Virtues and Vices are apropos to character creation.
Virtues and Vices are explicitly bound to human culture,
and thus may only apply to human (or once-human)
characters. It is reasonable to suggest, however, that aliens
that come from rich cultures likely have traits that are
virtually analogous to Virtue and Vice. A good metric is:
if your alien character has Cultural Qualities at primary or
29
ALIEN IMPERFECTIONS
secondary, then applying Virtue or Vice is likely appropriate. If Cultural Qualities fall to tertiary or quaternary status
at the time of creation, then its likely that the character
does not possess rigorous cultural norms.
Pre-Built
Alien Races
Willpower
Grays
Willpower remains as an exhaustible personal resource

for both human and alien characters. An alien character
still has that conviction and drive to perform tasks critical
to her nature, and so all the rules for Willpower still apply
(unless otherwise modiied by the alien Qualities above).
Morality
You have three options in terms of dealing with Morality.
First: scrap it. This is recommended, because the
ethnical mores of an alien species are, perhaps obviously, totally alien. Do coyotes, jellyish and falcons care
about Morality? No. Its an explicitly human thing, so,
ditch it.
Second: use it as written. If youre assuming that the
alien creatures in The Infinite Macabre are humanoid,
then why shouldnt they be beholden to Morality?
Third: build-your-own. If you have Hunter: The Vigil,
then you can turn to the Appendix (The Code, p. 325)
for guidelines on modifying the pre-existing Morality Advantage in order to make it more alien and monstrous.
Alternately, feel free to check out World of Darkness: Mirrors for additional ways to fold, spindle and
mutilate the Morality system.
No, Seriously,
Please Make Up Your Own Stuff
We cannot stress enough how much we want
you to contribute your own ideas to this by coming up with your own Qualities and Imperfections
for alien species.
You want a handful of starting points?
What about
Aliens that spit acid? That bleed fuel? That can ly?
That can gain sustenance from eating rocks and
other inorganic material? That have tentacles, or
multiple limbs, or really long legs for jumping?
What if you get really weird: heads separate from
bodies, dopplegangers, living computers, locks
of sentient insects, manifested shadows, organic
starships, aliens no bigger than a human ist, or
hyper-intelligent moon-spiders?
Qualities: Cultural (Diplomatic , Logical );

Mental (Telepathic , Tech Brain ); Social (Lyrical
Voice ); Physical (Vicious Body Parts -- needletipped ingers)
Imperfection: Small in Stature
The Grays are the classic alien in occult lore, just like
the ones that kidnapped Betty and Barney Hill in the 1960s:
they have small bodies, large heads, black almond-shaped
eyes, and wrinkly gray flesh. They are, as a culture, fascinated
by other species: they are obsessed with finding out what
makes other creatures tick, happy to probe or dissect whenever they can do so without contravening galactic law.
Nordics
Qualities: Social (Lyrical Voice , Seductive );

Mental (Non-Linear Thought Patterns ); Cultural
(Pilgrim Culture ); Physical (Human-Seeming )
Nobody knows exactly where the Nordics come from,
and frankly, they dont understand it, either. They only
know that they are born, naked but as fully-formed adults,
out amongst the stars. They literally just appear, stepping out
of stardock closets or waking up in the cargo holds of cruising starliners. Theyre fairly strange, as they look alarmingly
human, and in fact earn their name from their pale skin,
tall builds and blond hair. They seem hell-bent on traveling
the universe (they have been seen on Earth for thousands
of years) and learn as much as they can, driven as they are
by this almost obsessive pilgrimage, a pilgrimage that they
seem unable to put in too many words. They adore human
beings and seem to enjoy sex with them, too. Procreation
with them is, thankfully, not possible. Their ultimate origins
and purpose remain mysterious even to them.
Reptoids
Qualities: Physical (Vicious Body Parts : Talons;

Chameleon ; Natural Armor : Scaled Flesh); Cultural (Warlike Species ); Social (Beast Whisperer
); Mental (Skill Focus : Intimidation)
Imperfection: Vulnerability (Ice)
Nobody really likes the Reptoidsthese brutish reptilian
thugs dont make friends easily because they just dont care.
They enjoy violence. They enjoy pain. Its how their culture
survives and thrives. But just because nobody likes them doesnt
mean theyre not wanted. Reptoids serve as powerful berserker
warriors, body guards, mercenaries and assassins.
30
MT
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For use with the

World of Darkness Rulebook
w w w. w o r l d o f d a r k n e s s . c o m
A collection of monsters
for the World of Darkness
BY
Jennifer Brozek
Fools Gold
Whats that you got there? It was Jason, Tonys roommate.
Tony instinctively closed his hand and hunched over his treasure. Nothin, he muttered. He
winced as Jason swung a meaty fist and connected with his shoulder.
What is it? Jason loomed over him, not used to being denied.
Just a rock. Probably not real anyway. He let Jason pry open his hand and take the shiny, gold
colored stone from him.
Whoa. Whats this? Gold?
Tony shrugged. Probably just pyrite.
What?
Fools gold. Not real gold. Just looks like it.
Whered you get it? Jason examined the stone with some curiosity. It looked like gold. It even
smelled like it. Not that he actually knew what gold smelled like. It was a metal smell. Looks like
a duck, quacks like a duck, probably is a duck
Nowhere. Jason didnt immediately respond to Tonys feeble answer. The silence stretched
between them until Tony couldnt help himself. He looked up at Jason. Jason was smiling. It never
boded well for anyone when Jason smiled especially not for Tony.
Jason handed back the gold stone without another punch or even throwing the stone at him.
Then Jason sat down across from Tony, just looking at the smaller man. Tony could almost see
the tiny wheels in Jasons head click over what he thought the stone was and Tonys reluctance
to talk about it. He watched the big man come to a conclusion and waited for the onslaught.
You found something, didnt you? Jasons voice was casual and friendly.
It wasnt really a question and Tony knew it. Maybe.
Something big.
Maybe, Tony repeated.
Is it what I think it is? Jason gestured to the stone that Tony had cupped possessively in his
hand.
Tony looked away and pushed his glasses up his nose. When he glanced back at Jason, he saw
the storm clouds gathering there but also saw Jasons control the same control he always used
to get what he wanted from women. The man had the cunning patience of a predator when he
really wanted something and realized that right of might wasnt going to cut it. Jason was smart
when he needed to be.
Like now.
Cmon, buddy, Jason coaxed. You can tell me. Weve been best friends for years. Havent I
always protected you?
Tony shrugged, noncommittal.

Whered you find it? The gold. Youre a smart guy. Youre the brains of the outfit. You know
it. Im kinda big and dumb. You found something, and people are gonna want it. Ill be here to
protect you from them.
Tony thought about it a bit more and finally nodded. Jason was right in that one respect at least.
Yeah, its gold. I found it in one of the deep caves in the hills.
A lot?
Enough. Enough to make one or two people comfortable for the rest of their lives.
Jasons smile stretched wide, Where?
Tony shook his head. Its complicated. Id have to show you. He paused. But wed share, right?
And youd make sure that no one hurt me, right?
Right. I promise. No oned ever hurt you again. Jasons smile grew wider and more predatory.
In fact, wed move out of Olympia to Seattle. New place. New people. None of the old bastards
from town begging for money. Wed be new people and Id make sure it happened that way. I
promise. This could be the break weve been looking for.
Tony looked at Jason, calculating how much of what he was saying was the truth and how much
of it was a lie. Jason seemed pretty sincere and it would be great to leave this tiny damn city.
Capital of Washington state or not, it was still in the ass-end of nowhere and filled with bigoted
hicks who looked at him and his cane like his arthritis might be catching.
Finally, Tony nodded. Ok. Ill show you tomorrow. Its kind of a hike. So, well get up early
and go.
mmm
It was a cloudy, misty day in the Olympic National Forest, which wasnt unusual. The two men
tromped through the forest and up a hill on a barely-there trail. It was slow going with Tony and
his cane, but Jason was in good spirits and feeling patient. If his little buddy was right, all of their
money woes would be over with. If Tony was wrong, well, his personal woes at Jasons hands would
just be beginning.
After about half a day of easy hiking, Tony made a sharp left directly into the forest. Jason followed. Dude, howd you find this place anyway?
Tony shrugged. Sometimes I go wandering to get away from town, in order to exercise my legs
and help me get over the use of this damned cane. He shook the cane to emphasize is point.
Theres nothing there for me. I like it up here.
Ok. He paused before he asked, So, how much further?
Tony heard the clear suspicion in Jasons voice. He paused and pointed with his cane to a copse
of trees about a hundred meters away. Its just through those trees over there.
I dont see anything.
You will. Then he added, Promise.
And like Tony promised, just as they broke through the copse of trees, there was a large opening
in the hillside. Tony stopped. Were here. Well, sorta. We gotta get our lights on and stuff.
Jason shrugged off his pack and peered into the cave entrance. You sure about this? Is it safe?
Tony gave him a disbelieving look. I walked in with only my cane and flashlight. Well be fine.
He couldnt keep the touch of scorn at Jasons concern out of his voice. He changed his tune as soon
as he saw Jason register it. Besides, youre here if I get into any trouble. Right? You promised.
The big guy remembered the gold stone and nodded. His smile was a little forced but it was
still there. Right. I promised. Youll be fine either way. You know this tunnel and I dont.
He pulled his hat and headlight out from the backpack and put them on. Lead the way to the
riches, little buddy.
Tony smiled, putting his own hardhat and headlight on. Thats the plan.
mmm
It was a much easier hike than Jason expected, despite the darkness and rubble in the
tunnel. With Tonys slow, careful movements, there was no threat of Jason falling at all.
For a long time there was nothing but darkness and the sounds of their footsteps and
breathing.
Tony broke the silence. It was just up here. Theres a big cave. Its got some, um, quartz crystal
growing, too. But thats not as valuable as the gold. Just pretty.
Pretty is good. Gold is better. Jason grunted as they continued on. But now he was paying
attention. Part of him seriously considered murdering Tony and leaving him in another cave
somewhere, but part of him knew that Tony was the smarter of the two of them and hed be better
at negotiating a price for the gold and managing the money. All Jason would have to do was make
sure that no one else bullied Tony into handing over that gold. It would be the two of them, with
Tony doing the work and Jason reaping the rewards.
Jasons daydream about how he would spend his riches was interrupted when Tony stopped at
the entrance of a large cavern, saying, Were here. Jason stopped and looked around. His headlamp beam danced all over the walls and ceiling of the cavern as he looked for the signs of gold.
The place was huge, and he would see an occasional flash of glittering in the light but dismissed
that as not gold. He already knew that quartz really wasnt worth that much. Where is it? Wheres
the gold?
You dont see it? Tonys voice was calm.
No, meathead. I dont. Where? Show me! In his eagerness, Jason forgot that he had promised
himself that hed be nicer to Tony now and in the future.
Tony was silent and unmoving.
Jason realized his mistake. Im sorry, dude. Tony. Im just, you know, excited.
Ok. Tony sighed and headed forward. He kept his head down and his light on his feet to make
sure he didnt fall. He stopped again. Its here.
Jason looked down at Tonys feet. Where?
Tony raised his case and his head at the same time to point at the wall in front of them, Here.
In the glare of the headlamp, a large section of the wall as tall as Tony and as wide as a couch
glittered: gold and gorgeous. Its beauty doubled when Jasons headlamp joined Tonys. Most of the
wall was smooth with small veins of gold shooting off from the giant central deposit of gold ore.
Holy shit, Jason muttered.
I told you. Enough for one or two people for the rest of their lives.
Jason nodded and patted Tonys shoulder as he walked past the smaller man. You were right,
buddy. Oh, you were so right! Jason walked up to the wall of gold, admiring it. Were rich.
Were rich! He put a hand on the gold to feel the cold, smooth, precious metal. Screw Seattle.
We could go anywhere on this. He looked back at Tony to say something else but the wall of ore
beneath his hand moved. What the fuck?
Tony took a step back from Jason and the suddenly moving wall of gold. He did not look surprised
or even scared as he watched Jasons hand sink into the wall and a tentacle of gold shoot out to
wrap itself around Jasons wrist and forearm. As Jason struggled to get his right hand free, his right
foot, the one he was using for leverage, also sunk deep into the wall of gold. Another tentacle of
gold wrapped itself around Jasons lower leg.
Jason flailed around and held out his left hand to Tony. Help me! Your cane!
Tony nodded and offered Jason his cane but instead of pulling it away from the wall to help
Jason out of the slowly moving wall, Tonys lip curled into a silent snarl and he lunged forward.
The cane slid through Jasons hand and the end of it slammed into Jasons chest, pushing him
backwards into the wall. Jasons arms flailed briefly before his body succumbed to gravity and
momentum, falling backwards into the wall of roiling wall of gold. He was immediately engulfed
from the waist down and stuck from his waist to his shoulders. Only his chest, neck and head were
free of the living rock.
Help me! Jason screamed in panic. He flailed as hard as he could but just like a bug trapped
in amber, Jason was going nowhere.
No, Tony said; his voice was low and full of hate. No. I did this to you. I did it on purpose.
Youve tortured me all my life and now Im going to watch you die. Tony smiled as he watched
Jasons realization that this had all been a set up. Yeah. Im the smart one, and Ive had enough
of you.
He swung his headlamp to the wall of gold holding Jason fast. It was still now, and looked like
stone again. It almost got me, too. But I scared a mouse and it ran over the gold. I watched the
gold thing grab it and eat it. It took less than an hour for the mouse to dissolve. I wonder how
long youll take. A day? Two?
You cant do this. You cant! Help me, Tony. Were friends.
Tony shook his head. Weve never been friends.
Jason struggled more but still could not get free of the things grip. It hurts. God, my hands!
My hands are on fire!
Good. I hope you burn to your bones. Tony smiled mirthlessly at Jason. But he almost lost
his nerve when Jason started sobbing in pain and fear. Tony almost almost wanted to help
the bastard. Then he forced himself to remember what Jason had done to him. He hardened his
heart and turned to leave.
Credits
Written: Jennifer Brozek
Art Director: Aileen Miles
Layout: Jessica Mullins
Interior Art: Justin Norman
Cover Art: Justin Norman
For Use with

the World of
Darkness Rulebook
2009 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 Proverbial
Monsters 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 fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content.
Reader discretion is advised.
Credits
Introduction
Mirror, Mirror, Full of Cracks
Step on a Crack
What is an Archway but a Portal?
If Four is Lucky Five Must Be Luckier
Only the Children of Autumn
Glistering or Glittering Neither is Gold
Ashes to Ashes, Death to Death
Spirits of the House
Smell the Flowers but Dont Take One
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35
40
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49
7
Introduction
Introduction
Prayers and superstitions have been around
since man could speak. Dire warnings and
advice to perform certain actions to ward off
evil are recited in easily-remembered phrases so
that even children can remember them. Most
of these adages were born from ignorance or
misunderstandings, but some carry a very real
warning hidden within them. Sometimes its
best to remember why all that glitters is not
gold and that breaking a mirror brings seven
years of bad luck.
Proverbial Monsters plays upon common
fears and superstitions. It can be used in almost any of the World of Darkness games, but
works especially well with the themes detailed
in the World of Darkness Rulebook, Innocents, Hunter: the Vigil and Changeling: the
Lost. The obscurity of the proverbs origins
is the main tool for you as the Storyteller to
enhance your game with mystery, danger and
terror. Maxims and folk wisdom have been
around for so long that many people dont
know or care what they refer to or even
what they mean anymore. At the core of
every legend and every superstition is a grain
of truth that has been lost to time through
disbelief or misunderstanding. This book gives
you an idea of where these proverbs might
have come from, and how you can use them
in your game.
Presented here are nine monsters based on traditions and superstitions that range from the
well-known to the esoteric.
You will have seven years of bad luck if you
break a mirror. You might just call a strange
creature to you.
All that glitters is not gold. Greed calls to

greed. Those who seek to steal my treasures will
become my feast instead.
Step on a crack and break your mothers

back. The monster within the earth will hear
you, and your mother will break her back carrying your dead body to its grave.
It is bad luck to completely rake out a fire

on the hearth a few embers should always
be left burning. Bright and shining, you call to
me and I come. Snuff out the burning guardian
and I will bring you a death of burning ash for
my own pleasure.
Walking under a ladder is bad luck. It may

not be a ladder you walk under or through
and who knows what you will bring through
with you.
Picking a five-leaf clover brings bad luck. It
doesnt belong to you. Its owner wants it back,
and it wants revenge for your theft as well.
Unless you were born in October, the wearing of an opal will be ill-fated. Only the Children of Autumn may wear my sigil. Those who
dare to wear what is not their birthright will pay.
Introduction
Never open an umbrella inside a house

or you will draw back luck to you. Do you
mock me, you mortal of flesh and bone? Do
you think I do not care for you and this house
well enough? Fine. Ill show you what a cursed
house can do.
Never take flowers from a grave or you will
be the next to be in a grave. Never take from
the dead, for we are angry and vengeful and have
long memories.
Most of these monsters are subtle, cunning

creatures that will not attack something or
someone more powerful than they are unless
they are. This does not mean the characters of
your chronicle will not be targeted. However,
these monsters understand that they should
not attack the hungry lion while theres a lamb
nearby. Why attack the hero when the heros
mother is easier prey and just as tasty?
The monsters presented herein may be used in
any number of ways: a distraction or red herring
(the death of a contact), a catalyst for change in
a player characters background story (why the

player character ran away from home or becoming
a hunter in response to witnessing a death at the
hands of one of these monsters) or the reason for
a particular phobia (the player character cannot
stand to look at her own reflection at night).
Each monster is given statistics, specific powers
and hints on how the characters in your chronicle
can discover it. Also, each monster has a story idea
with statistics, goals and consequences for failure.
If you like the monster but dont like the mechanics, modify them to suit your games needs.
Introduction
Mirror, Mirror,
Mirror,
Mirror,
Full
of
Cracks
Full ofCracks
Jane suppressed an expletive as her hand mirror slipped
from her grasp and shattered on the tile floor. It was the
second one this year. Great. Thats fourteen years bad
luck, she muttered as she bent down and picked up the
plastic frame with its broken pieces of glass. She almost
dropped it again when she saw her own reflection turn
and smile at her. Curiosity stayed her hand, and her
own strangely smiling face drew her in.
You will have seven years of bad luck

if you break a mirror.
The belief that the soul projects out of the body
and into mirrors in the form of a reflection underlies the most widely-known mirror superstition:
that breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad
luck. Some people believe that breaking a mirror
also breaks the soul of the one who broke it. The
soul, angered at being hurt, exacts seven years of
bad luck in payment for such carelessness.
One apocryphal story says the Romans, who were
the first to make glass mirrors, attributed the seven
years of bad luck to a belief that life renewed itself
every seven years. To break a mirror meant to break
ones health, and this broken health could not be
remedied for seven years. This was Roman orator
Servius Tirentius Costas explanation to his friends
and family on why they should never break a mirror.
It was easier to tell them this than explain his encounter and research into dangerous creatures that
he named Miraree (mir-RAH-ree) after the Latin
word mirari, which means to wonder at.
Miraree
Quotes: Look at me!
Cant you see Im beautiful? Im you. See how
lovely I am. Look at me and know I am you.
Look at yourself! I know what you do at night,
hidden from the world. I know. Look at yourself and
see what there is to see. Dont make me force you!
10
Mirror mirror full of cracks
Background: Man has looked into reflective

surfaces for as long as there have been reflective surfaces to look into. Miraree occasionally look back.
They are jealous, hungry creatures who envy mans
physical body and crave his immortal soul. They may
also have helped spawn legends about deadly but
beautiful water nymphs luring men to their deaths
by drowning them within ponds and lakes.
Once glass mirrors were created, the Miraree
found a way into our world for a short time. Should
another mirror break nearby within seven years, a
temporary tunnel of sorts is created into our world.
Once a Miraree comes through, it has only one
goal in mind: consuming as much of a soul as possible. They will gorge themselves until it is time to
return home. A confrontation with a Miraree can
be deadly. If the Miraree can consume enough of
its victims essence, the victim will die. The death
will look like natural causes: a heart attack, a brain
aneurism or something similar. A Miraree can only
terrorize and attack its intended victim through
her own reflection in mirrors. Some intended
victims delay the attack by an instinctual fear and
avoidance of mirrors that they do not understand
but obey nonetheless. However, in these days of
ubiquitous modern glass buildings and reflective
screens, no one can avoid mirrors forever.
Description: No one really knows what a
Miraree looks like, since it assumes the reflection
of its intended victim who can see it within the
broken shards of a mirror. Every shard of mirror
will show the exact same thing no matter where
it is in the room.
Storytelling Hints: The Miraree always looks like
its victim. If there are multiple people in a room,
the shards of the broken mirror will only reflect the
one it is attacking. While attacking, the Miraree
will try to entrance, trick and beguile its victim into
continuing to look at himself in the mirror shards. It
will use the victims own image to do it. This

monster prefers to lure its victims with honey
rather than beat them with a stick. However,
if entreaties do not work, the Miraree is not
above dire threats of terrors gleaned from the
victims mind.
Once it is able to come through, it
may use any mirror in a building. It is a
cunning creature that will stalk its prey
from room to room and mirror to mirror
within the building. It cannot leave
the structure where the last mirror was
broken: While a broken mirror may be
moved to another location, there must
be at least one broken mirror on the
premises for the Miraree to be able
to hunt and feed there. Abandoned
homes and buildings are favorite
hunting grounds for the Miraree, and
more than one may congregate in an
abandoned structure that has many
broken mirrors.
There are two ways a person can protect
himself from the attack of the Miraree. First,
he must not be able to see himself in any of the
broken pieces of mirror. How they do this is up
to him, and you decide if the way the character
chooses will work or not. Once the victim can
no longer see himself in the mirror shards, he is
free to flee the scene, leaving the mirror shards and
Miraree behind for the next unwary passerby.
Secondly, all of the shards of the broken mirror
must be completely destroyed to the point that
no one looking at any one shard can see any part
of themselves, even a shadow, in them. Once the
mirror shards are utterly destroyed (damage to the
mirror does an equivalent amount of damage to
the Miraree, due to its symbiotic connection to the
mirror), the tunnel between worlds is closed and
the Miraree is banished.
Mental Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3,
Resolve 4
Physical Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 5,
Stamina 3
Social Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 4,
Composure 2
Mental Skills: None
Physical Skills: None
Social Skills:
Empathy 1,
Intimidate 3,
Persuasion 3, Subterfuge 1
Merits: None
Willpower: 6
Morality: N/A
Virtue: Prudence
Vice: Gluttony
Health: 8
Initiative: 7
Defense: 3
Speed: 7
Size: 5
Powers: Beguile and Consume
Miraree
11
Special Powers
Miraree have two special powers, Beguile
and Consume. These powers revolve around
the creatures ability to eat a sentient creatures
soul or essence.
Beguile (Manipulation + Persuasion or Intimidate versus victims Resolve + Composure): The
Miraree will use the victims reflected visage and
voice to entice its victim to stay and look at herself
in the mirror. This can be in the form of entreaties
or threats. For every success, the victim is beguiled
for that number of turns, and can only stare at
her reflection (dropping her Defense to 0). After
the initial beguilement, the victim may make a
contested Resolve + Composure roll to attempt to
break free of the enchantment. She must gain at
least one success to break free from this power.
Consume (Resolve + Empathy versus the victims Resolve + Composure): Once the Miraree
has set its sights on its victim and has beguiled
her, it may begin to consume the victims essence. The character will feel herself being
drained and will see her reflection grow weak
and seem to age. The victim must be beguiled
before she may be consumed. For every success
on the monsters Consume roll, the victim loses
a point of Willpower and gains a -1 penalty (up
to a maximum of -5) to all her degeneration
rolls for a number of days equal to the Mirarees
Resolve. If the victim loses all her Willpower
points, all additional successes translate into
points of lethal damage instead.
Story Idea:
An Ugly Reflection
Stefano is a sullen, angry teenager who
believes that the world owes him a good life,
whether or not he actually deserves one. Three
weeks ago, he broke his mothers makeup
12
mirror while stealing money from her purse.

He hid the compact in his room to cover
up his theft, but attributed the intense feeling of being watched to guilt. Last week, he
punched his bedroom mirror in a fit of anger
at his fathers sharp words about waking his
baby sister.
The next morning, his own reflection turned
to look at him. It was no longer just his reflection, but something different, malevolent and
hungry. As Stefano felt himself losing pieces
of his soul to the thing in the mirror, he cried
out to it and made a deal with the monster to
save his own pathetic life. The thing in the
mirror, greedy and hungry for as much as it
could get, agreed. As long as Stefano fed it,
he was safe.
The first victim was his squalling baby sister.
She died quickly and quietly while Stefano held
the cracked compact mirror above her. Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome is what the death certificate said. Hes making plans for his next victim:
Sharon, that stupid tease who not only wont go
out with him, but still expects him to help her
with her homework. Stefano left his mothers
broken compact mirror under Sharons dresser,
and broke her hand mirror. He apologized,
promising to replace it as he put the cracked
hand mirror back on Sharons dresser. He knows
he will never have to fulfill that promise; shell
be dead soon enough.
Now, Sharon is having nightmares about her
reflection, and refuses to look in any mirror in
her home. She doesnt know why shes having
these nightmares, but she feels deep down they
will come true. She needs help before whatever
is lurking behind the mirror gets her. She turns
to the only people she thinks she can trust the
characters. She needs to go home and get her
stuff, but shes too afraid to go alone. She needs
someone there to protect her.
I See You. Do You See Me?

MENTAL
PHYSICAL
SOCIAL
Overview
Character Goals
Sharon has begged the characters to come

home with her while she packs to stay elsewhere.
She cannot stand the thought of being alone
in her home. In the house, everyone will feel a
sense of foreboding and of being spied on. If the
group decides to leave without investigating, the
Miraree will attack Sharon from the hallway
mirror, beguiling her and then beginning to
consume her. If the player characters investigate
Sharons home, they will find the two broken
mirrors. Once both broken mirrors have been
found, whomever is holding (or is closest to) the
broken compact mirror will be attacked.
Discover that Stefano is the reason behind

the Miraree being at Sharons house. This may
be discovered through mundane or supernatural
analysis of the makeup compact, or by discovering that Stefano broke the hand mirror just
before the incidents at Sharons house began.
Figure out how to stop, banish or destroy the
Miraree while saving Sharon (and themselves)
before she is consumed.
Description
Ive never seen that compact before. Its not even
my shade. But the hand mirror is mine. Stefano, this kid
from school, accidentally broke it a few days ago. He
said he was going to buy me a new one. Sharon reaches
out her hand for the compact mirror and then freezes as
her reflection turns to her. The rest of you realize that
only Sharons reflection can be seen in all of the mirrors
in the room, but doesnt reflect her movements. The
Sharon in the mirror is talking but you cannot hear what
she is saying. The real Sharon is staring at her reflection
with a mixture of terror and fascination.
Storyteller Goals
The main goal of this scene is to introduce
some subtle horror, and show that even normal
people can sometimes control unusual creatures
(although usually not every effectively). The
Miraree will try to consume everyone it possibly
can before the characters can escape or destroy
the mirror. It is a predator. It will not leave while
there is food to be had, and anyones fair game.
If Sharon is not the closest potential victim or is
not the person holding the compact, the Miraree
will go after the one that is. It will fully focus on
that one victim.
Actions
The scene begins either when Sharon heads
out of the home or after the two broken mirrors
are found. The characters have choices to make:
Do they flee the scene to come back and fight
another day or do they stand and fight? If they
choose to fight, they can either try to destroy the
Miraree before it eats any of them or to figure
out how to thwart the monster (such as blinding
each person from seeing his own reflection in the
mirror) even if they dont have the knowledge
to banish it immediately.
Who is the Fairest of Them All?

Dice Pool: Manipulation + Persuasion or
Intimidate (dice pool 6) versus victims Resolve
+ Composure.
Action: Instant and contested
More information on the Mirarees Beguile
power can be found on p. 12.
Hindrances (victims): No occult knowledge
(-1). Exceptional eyesight (-1).
Help (victims): Poor or hindered eyesight
(+1). Blind characters are immune to the Mirarees power.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: If the Storyteller rolls a
dramatic failure, the Miraree not only fails to
beguile its victim, but there is something about
I see you do you see me
13
her that makes her unpalatable to the Miraree.

The Miraree will choose a new victim on the
next turn and ignore the first victim for the rest
of the scene. If the player of the victim rolls a
dramatic failure, the Miraree has a hold on the
victim, and may begin to consume her in the
same turn it has beguiled her.
Failure: If the Miraree fails to beguile its victim, the victim may act, including fleeing the
scene which is what Sharon does.
Success: If the Miraree has successfully beguiled its victim, she may take no actions other
than to watch her reflection in the mirror.
Exceptional Success: If the Storyteller rolls an
exceptional success, the Miraree has such a hold
on its victim that it may begin to consume the
victim in the same turn that it has beguiled her.
If the player of the victim rolls an exceptional
success, the Miraree will fail to beguile the victim and ignore her for the rest of the scene.
What a Tasty Morsel

Dice Pool: Resolve + Empathy (dice pool 6)
versus the victims Resolve + Composure.
More information on the Mirarees Consume
Hindrances (victims): A beguiled victim will
take no physical actions, and has a Defense of 0
(making it easier for others to attack, grapple or
otherwise move her).
Help (victims): The victim must be beguiled
before it can be consumed.
Roll Results
dramatic failure, the victim not only breaks
free of the Mirarees beguiling charm and is
14
undamaged, but there is something about her

that makes her unpalatable to the Miraree. The
Miraree will choose a new victim on the next
turn and ignore the first victim for the rest of
the scene. If the player of the victim rolls a dramatic failure, the victim takes an additional -2
penalty on her next attempt to break free from
the beguilement.
Failure: If the Miraree fails, the victim manages to fight off the attack.
Success: If the Miraree succeeds, the victim
is successfully attacked, as per the Consume
power on p. 12.
exceptional success, the victim not only suffers
from a successful attack, but she takes an additional -2 penalty to her next attempt to break
free from the beguilement. If the player of the
victim rolls an exceptional success, the victim
not only breaks free, but the Miraree will ignore
her for the rest of the scene.
Consequences
If the player characters do not go to Sharons
home within two days, at least one person who
lives there Sharon, her brother or her parents will die of a heart attack or from some
other mysterious but plausibly natural cause of
death. If they flee the scene without completely
destroying the broken mirrors, the Miraree will
go back to Stefano through the homes second
broken mirror. Stefano then tries to sacrifice
one of his parents in order to save himself. If the
characters manage to banish the Miraree back
to its realm by completely destroying the broken
mirrors, the Miraree will be gone, but they will
always know what a cracked or broken mirror
could mean.
Step
on
a
Crack
Step on a Crack
Step on a crack, Joe thought as he stepped over
the large crack bisecting the hiking trail. Break
your mothers back. He wondered at the inanity of the childhood rhyme. As he turned back to
Barry to comment on it, he heard his friend cry
out in pain. Joes heart hammered in his chest as
he realized that they were not alone on the hiking
trail. Barry was on the ground with one foot buried up to the ankle in dirt. Next to him, a strange
humanoid creature was growing out of the ground.
It resembled the golems Joe had read about, but he
didnt think golems were supposed to have sharp,
bloodstained teeth. Suddenly, Joe thought he knew
what happened to the other missing hikers here on
Echo Mountain.
Step on a crack and break your

mothers back.
Most people believe that the proverb of not
stepping on cracks it is nothing more than a
rhyming ritual that children use to frighten
their peers. Some people connect it with the
childhood game of hopscotch, where landing
on a line (instead of in the middle of a square)
is considered a foul and the player must start all
over again. The very real warning of the proverb
has been forgotten, but it still protects cautious
children today.
The real meaning behind the warning of
rhyme comes from the translated Greek warning of Do not step on cracks that cross your
path. For thousands of years in remote parts of
the world, this warning has been said from native to foreigner and from guide to tourist. The
reasons for giving such warnings have changed
over time based on who gave the warning and
who listened or did not listen to them.
Those who obeyed the warnings had nothing
to fear. Those who did not were lucky most of
the time. Those who were not lucky usually
didnt live to tell the tale of the Doliochthon
(doh-lee-OKH-thon).
Doliochthon
Background: In a manuscript purporting to date
from ancient Greece, the author Agathon Charis
stepped over a crack in the road while his slave did
not. A sudden noise startled him, and he turned
to find his slave being attacked and eaten by the
golem-like creature. Fleeing for his life, Agathon
ran to the next hill over. He paused to look and see
if the creature had followed, and was relieved that
it had not. Instead, it had torn the hapless slave to
pieces and was eating him, skin, bones and all.
The document explains that Agathon remained
where he was and watched the creature, curious at
how such a large creature could have snuck up on
them when there was nothing to hide behind near the
road and the grass was only knee-high. He soon had
his answer. After the creature was finished eating the
slave, leaving nothing but splatters of blood, Agathon
watched the creature move down the pathways and
then suddenly disappear. In its place a large crack appeared, crossing the trail he had followed. Agathon
dubbed the creature dolio chthon, or deceitful surface of the earth. Over the years, the two words have
been shortened to the single name of Doliochthon.
The Doliochthon is a primordial, solitary creature
that exists in all parts of the world and in all climates.
The single consistent factor in all Doliochthon
stories is a remote territory to live in, away from human civilization. Unfortunately for everyone, such
territories are becoming smaller and harder to find.
Description: A Doliochthon is a large humanoid
creature standing between seven and eight feet tall. Its
body is made up of the earth, grass, leaves, twigs and
weeds found in its territory. It has a prehensile tail that
lies flat against the body when it is not being used. A
fang-filled mouth that takes up almost half of its head
dominates its flat, oval face. There is only an impression
to show where a nose would be, and its eyes appear to be
a pair of stones. The creature is a master at camouflage
when it is still, and it is incredibly strong.
Step on a crack
15
Storytelling Hints: The Doliochthon is more

animal than man, but in essence it is neither. It is
intelligent and cunning, cautious rather than reactive. It prefers to hunt solitary game, but will go after
small groups. It always hunts in areas of remote trails
animal or manmade. The crack that is placed
across the trail is actually its prehensile tail that is
camouflaged to look like a crack. When something
steps on it, the tail reflexively wraps around the
limb that triggered it, holding it fast. Once the prey
is caught, it is the Doliochthons main focus unless
something else attacks it. Then it will disable the
prey and attack the attacker.
The Doliochthon cannot be reasoned

with, but it can be frightened away by
a greater threat to its life and territory.
It can be soothed by supernatural means
and sent away, but it will never willingly
become a pet or servant. It is a wild creature, and a large fire will usually make it
flee in fear.
The Doliochthons goal is to feed. It is a
hungry, cunning creature. It will go after
the last person in a line, the pet on a leash
or a solitary target.
Resolve 3
Physical Attributes: Strength 5,
Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Social Attributes: Presence 2, Manipulation 1, Composure 3
Mental Skills: None
Physical Skills: Athletics 3, Brawl 4,
Stealth 5, Survival 4
Social Skills: None
Merits: Fast Reflexes 2, Giant
Willpower: 6
Morality: N/A
Virtue: Prudence
Vice: Greed
Health: 8
Initiative: 8
Defense: 3
Speed: 8
Size: 6
Armor: 2
Power: Camouflage
Notes: The Doliochthon does not use
weapons.
Using Different World of Darkness Games

Werewolf: The Doliochthon will instinctively determine that a werewolf is a competitor for
food and will attack with fierce protectiveness of its territory (+1 to its attack dice pool). If there
are three or more werewolves in the party, the Doliochthon will sense that the party is too much
of a danger to its life and not attack at all.
Mage: The Doliochthon is considered a cryptid (Mage: the Awakening, pp. 338-340), which
means it cannot endure capture or confinement away from the place its encountered in the
magic of the area sustains it.
16
step on a crack
Special Powers
The Doliochthon has a single special power
called Camouflage, which is its supernatural
ability to blend into its surroundings.
Camouflage (Wits + Stealth versus the targets
Wits + Composure): The Doliochthon has had
hundreds of generations to perfect its ability
to blend in with its surroundings and become
invisible. The contested check should only
come if the player characters are looking for the
creature or something unusual. If the creature
is not moving, observers have a -1 penalty to
see it, even if they are actively looking for it. If
the creature is in motion, there is a +1 bonus to
the roll to see it (although it gives -1 to anyone
attempting to follow its trail, since it naturally
integrates into its environment). Blending or
not, the creature is not invisible while in motion. This is a supernatural ability that does
not fool thermal scanners or other applicable
equipment. This is simiar to the Glitras power,
mentioned on p. 37.
Story Idea:
The Hungry Jungle
An Aztec pyramid has been newly discovered
in southern Mexico. It appears to be undisturbed. However, the locals refuse to take a
group of archaeologists past a certain border in
the jungle. It does not matter how much the
archaeological team bribes them or threatens
them, the native guides always say the same
thing: This land belongs to the boca oculta or
the invisible mouth. The archaeologists feel
that such superstitions must not be allowed to
get in the way of the find of a lifetime.
The team has brought in outside survival experts to scout ahead and find a path to this temple.
Each one of them has listened to the local guides
about where the pyramid is and what the dangers
of the jungle are mundane and supernatural.
The first scout team did not return.
One survivor of the second scout team returned but his story was too insane to be believed. All he would say was, Something was
out there. The jungle came alive and took him!
Dragged him away! Hes gone! Gone!
Now the investors of the archaeological team
are getting impatient. Too much time and money
has been spent on this with no reward. Word of
the pyramids existence has gotten out, and there
is a worry that grave robbers or competitors will
get there before their team can. It is time to call
in the big guns.
You are hired to make a path to the pyramid
and get the team in before the competition
gets there first. However, something about this
invisible mouth story tells you that you will
need to be on high alert to get the job done
and your team paid. You are required to take at
least one member of the team with you so they
can identify the pyramid and gather an artifact
in order to make a claim on the site. You hope
that the archaeologist can hold his own in a
crisis especially when things start going wrong
and people start dying.
Variations
Your player characters are part of the
archaeological team.
Your player characters are hired guns.
Your player characters are a mix of both
teams.
doliochthon-Story idea the hungry jungle
17
Its Alive!
MENTAL
PHYSICAL
Overview
It is the morning of the last day of the hike
through the jungle. Its slow going, and everyones on high alert. There is only one scout
team left. After one of the three scouts didnt
make it back, your team leader instituted the
buddy system for everything. There is no room
for modesty or privacy. You are all under siege
by something unknown. Something has been
watching the group from afar, but no one has
been able to spot it yet.
The camp has been packed up, and everyone is
more than ready to go. While tensions are high,
so is hope that today you will reach your destination an untouched Aztec pyramid with all of
its secrets and riches still intact. One more day
of marching; thats all it should take. But a few
hours into the hike, the Doliochthon attacks.
Description
The jungle is hot and humid. Your hair and clothing
stick to you in uncomfortable clumps as sweat pours
from your body. Everywhere you look there are more
trees, more vines, more undergrowth to block your
way, despite the man at the head of the line with the
machete making the hard going a little easier. All you
can hear is the panting of the people around you and the
beating of your own heart. Something about this strikes
you as wrong. The jungle should be alive with sounds
cries of primates, calls of birds, buzzing of insects.
Just as you this wrongness penetrates your heat-fogged
brain, one of the men in your party screams.
Storyteller Goals
There are a lot of potential objectives with
this scene. You may choose to invoke fear of
the unknown, emphasize the deadliness of the
natural world or punish the hubris of meddling
with unknown things. It can also serve as a leadin scene to a larger story involving ancient ruins
touched by the supernatural.
18
step on a crack
SOCIAL
The main goal of the Doliochthon is to feed

and escape with the captured prey. These interlopers did not listen to the warnings, and now
they are on its territory fair game. The first
person attacked is the last man in the marching
line, Gunny (though he can be replaced with
any suitable Storyteller character). Gunny will
put up a fight but not much of one, because he
is caught completely by surprise. Once Gunny
is disabled, the Doliochthon will leave Gunny
to the side and go after the next closest, smallest
person in the party. Once that person is disabled,
it will take both bodies and flee into the jungle
with them.
Character Goals
First, to survive the initial attack of the
Doliochthon while making sure that no one
else other than Gunny is hurt. Gunny will be
mortally wounded, but if they cant save him,
perhaps they can recover his body for burial.
The second goal is to get the archaeologist to
the pyramid site so he can collect his data (and
any artifacts his investors might be interested
in), and then get him back out of the jungle
again.
The third goal is to kill the Doliochthon if
they can, either in the initial attack on the group
or during the trek out of the jungle.
Actions
The player characters can choose to flee the
scene while Gunny is being attacked, or they
can choose to attack the monster. If the monster
flees with Gunny or any other character, they
will need to track it down to where it lives if
they want to rescue him.
Brawl
Dice Pool: Strength + Brawl (dice pool 9)
minus the targets Defense
Action: Instant
Hindrances: The Doliochthon is being fired

on (-1). Thermal scanner, motion sensor, or
other high-tech surveillance gear allows the
target to dodge more accurately.
Help: The Doliochthon is in motion (+1).
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only does the Doliochthon fail to hit its intended target, it fails bad
enough that the creature considers the group too
great a threat to its existence and flees the scene
with the intention of picking them off one by
one until they leave its domain.
Failure: The Doliochthon fails to hit its intended target.
Success: The Doliochthon hit its intended
target, dealing damage to him.
Exceptional Success: The Doliochthon hits
its intended target, dealing damage to him and
knocking him out for the rest of the combat. If
the Doliochthon chooses to flee the scene, it will
take the unconscious victim with it.
Track It Down
Dice Pool: Wits + Survival (dice pool 7)
versus the characters Wits + Survival
Hindrances (trackers): The creatures Camouflage power naturally makes it harder to locate
it (-1; see p. 17)
Help (trackers): It does not specifically hide
its tracks (+1)
Roll Results
dramatic failure, not only does the Doliochthon
fail to hide its tracks, but blood loss from its
victims and other clear signs of movement bring
the trackers directly to the Doliochthons lair. If
the trackers roll a dramatic failure, no one can
pick up its trail this scene.
Failure: The Doliochthon fails to hide its trail.
Success: The Doliochthon hides its trail from
the tracker.
exceptional success, the Doliochthon hides its
trail from trackers using its large strides. No one
can pick up its trail this scene. If the trackers roll
an exceptional success, they immediately find a
clear path to its lair.
Consequences
If the team fails to kill the Doliochthon in the
initial attack, it will dog their steps to and from
the pyramid while they are in its territory, trying
to pick off team members one by one. If the team
camps at the pyramid, the Doliochthon will attempt to take a team member that night.
If the team decides against tracking the creature or fails in the attempt, any captured victims
will be killed and eaten.
The Doliochthon will continue to be a problem for the archaeologist team in the future if it
is not dealt with on this initial outing.
Its alive
19
What is
anArchway
Archway
What
is an
but
a
Portal?
but a Portal?
It all started when I walked under that ladder,
Daniel said miserably. There was a flash of light and
then everything went to shit. Right after that, I didnt
see the light change colors, started to cross the street
and almost died. If that guy hadnt pulled me back
Well, ever since then, I feel like somethings followed
me, hounded me, made me do things that almost get
me killed. Worse yet, Ive started seeing something out
of the corner of my eye; something horrible. I think it
wants me dead, and I dont know why.
Walking under a ladder is bad luck.

There are two commonly accepted origins for
cautioning against walking under a ladder. To
many people, walking under a ladder is bad luck,
while to others it is simply unsafe.
One commonly-cited origin theory of the superstition has to do with the similarities between
the appearance of a ladder leaning against a wall
and that of a gallows. Anything associated with a
gallows was considered ill luck, so walking under
one or a ladder that looked like one could
hardly be a good idea.
A more ominous origin of the warning comes
from Ireland in the dark ages. Documents of
a prolific religious chronicler tell of the first
encounter with the creature born from walking
under a ladder. The documents state that a man
discovered the malevolent creature after seeing
a flash of light surround his young son Ronan,
as he played around and then walked under a
ladder that was stored up against the barn wall.
For the next seven days, he watched his son
being subtly guided to do careless and reckless
things. On the seventh day, the father saw the
creature that plagued his son and put him in
such danger. The name for the ladder (drimire
in Irish) got confused with the creatures power
to create dream-like visions, and eventually the
spirit got the name of the Dreamer.
20
what is an archway but a portal
The Dreamer
Quotes: (distracting, indistinct whispers)
Background: No one truly knows where the
Dreamer comes from or what it is about the
particular ladders that make up its doorway into
our world. However, when a Dreamer comes into
our world, it is attached to a particular victim.
All of its focus is on that one victim, forcing the
victim into self-harm and, eventually, death.
The Dreamer has a limited time to do its work.
It can stay in our world for no more than ten days.
After that, the creature simply disappears and
its victim is safe (though traumatized). During
those ten days, the creature baffles, bemuses and
distracts its victim at the worst possible moments
in order to cause him harm. If its victim dies
within those ten days, the Dreamer may be seen
leaping upon the body in a flash of light and then
disappearing altogether.
Most of the notes involving the boy Ronan and
the Dreamer are now hidden within the Vatican
archives. However, some information on the
Dreamer is available in other esoteric books on
Christian magic and dealing with spirits.
Description: The Dreamer is an almost
invisible creature, except when its time is
running out and it is desperate for a kill.
Then, it will manifest enough to terrify its
victim. Manifested, the Dreamer looks like a
huge ethereal starfish, as large as a child and
the color of cobwebs. It has a single eye in
the center of its body and sucker-like mouths
on the ends of each limb. The Dreamer undulates in the air and moves quickly when
it is agitated.
Storytelling Hints: The Dreamer is a monster
of the mind and the spirit. It is unknown why
the creature comes through to bedevil its vic-
tims, but it is certain that

its portal to this world
must have three straight
sides. Also, the portal
apparently needs to be a
temporary thing, as the
creature never seems to
make its way through
other three-sided permanent structures. The
ladder itself, a conveyance from one place to
another, may be necessary for the Dreamer to
pass through from its
world to ours.
This creature will not
directly show itself to
its victim for the first
seven days of its torment. It will bedevil,
befuddle and distract
with indistinct whispers in order to get its
victim to accidently kill
himself in some horrible
manner walking in front of a bus or train, accidentally electrocuting himself, keeping him
from sleeping or other such things.
On the seventh day, the Dreamer will begin
to show itself in order to try to terrify its victim
into harming himself. It will rush at the victim
while he is driving, startle him while he is at the
top of a set of stairs or intimidate him until he
falls off some high ledge. The important thing
to know is that the Dreamer cannot physically
touch anything or physically harm its intended
victim. Everything it does is designed to get its
victim to hurt himself.
Attributes: Power 4, Finesse 2, Resistance 4
Willpower: 8
Initiative: 6
Defense: 4
Speed: 10
Size: 4
Corpus: 8
Essence: 15
Numina: Bemuse and Terrify
Special Powers
The two special Numina of the Dreamer,
Bemuse and Terrify, are designed to force a
person into harming himself through inattention or fear.
Bemuse (Power + Finesse versus the victims
Resolve + Composure): The Dreamer will mentally whisper or distract the victim in subtle
ways soft, distracting lights, a murmuring
whisper that is too far away to be understood,
sensations being stronger or softer or merely
different from what they are supposed to be.
This bemusement may also take the more aggressive form of a shape hovering just out of
sight, something flashing by or a jarring sound
that the only the victim can hear. Bemused
victims have a -2 dice penalty to all perception rolls.
Terrify (Power + Finesse versus the victims
Wits + Composure): When the Dreamer fails
to kill or hurt its intended target within seven
days, the Dreamer takes a more direct, visible
approach to distracting and frightening its
the dreamer
21
prey into acting in a reckless fashion. The Terrify ability is always accompanied by a physical
movement of the Dreamer; usually towards
the victim in an aggressive fashion. A terrified
victim may flee, cower or freeze in shock, but is
at a 5 penalty to any action taken against the
monster. Terrified victims have a -3 dice penalty
to all perception rolls.
Story Idea:
Heir to the Throne
Joseph Sarver is the CEO and owner of Sarver
Industries. He is a busy man who is trying to
do some good in the world with his medical
inventions while making a pretty penny. Unfortunately, Joes seventeen-year-old son, Lon,
came home from boarding school two days ago
raving about whispers in his ears and lights in
his eyes. It started four days before that at school
when all sorts of things started happening to
Lon stepping on a rake, falling down the stairs
and walking into doors. Since hes been home,
he hasnt been able to sleep and he continues to
hurt himself slipping in the bathroom, tripping
into a glass coffee table and almost falling into
the hot tub.
Joe is at his wits end. He cannot understand
why his bright, ambitious son has suddenly
become a distracted, accident-prone insomniac
who admits to hearing whispers in his head. He
has hired a team of experts to come in and evaluate Lon. He refuses to allow Lon to be taken to
22
a hospital for this evaluation. After all, what

would the papers say? It could harm his business, his reputation and the livelihood of his
employees. As such, he asks some associates of
his who are known for taking care of unusual
problems the characters.
When the characters enter the scene, they
are aware of Lons apparent psychosis and his
fathers distress. It is important is to discover
if Lon did have a psychotic break or not.
Above all, a promising young mans life may
be at stake, and the characters are the familys last hope to find out what is wrong and
fix it before Lon does something drastic of a
permanent nature.
The first night of observation brings about
some odd readings on the medical equipment,
security sensors and paranormal equipment.
The second night begins with Lon screaming for
his life and fleeing to the roof of the fifty-story
building that houses the familys penthouse
apartment.
Variations
Innocents: The gathering of people could
be a slumber party at Lons request, where
Lon tells his friends about the thing that
seems to be stalking him.
Vampire: Kindred with the Auspex
power Aura Perception can see a second
malevolent aura connected to Lons aura.
The best way to describe the aura of the
Dreamer is the Beast personified.
On the Rooftop
MENTAL
PHYSICAL
Overview
You and your group of people know that something is wrong with Lon, and that its not all in
his head. Since you have arrived at the Sarver
penthouse, things have gotten worse. Lon is
much more distracted and becoming more of a
danger to himself. Its after midnight, and despite
the exhaustion of the previous day, neither Lon
nor any of your group is sleeping. If Lon isnt
crazy, what can you do to help him? Would it
be safer to send him to a mental hospital where
there are fewer things for him to hurt himself
on, or is it better to see if he can be freed from
these compulsions?
Description
Lons yell of panic brings you out of your late night
stupor. Before anyone can react, Lon runs through
the home, out the front door and down the hall to the
rooftop exit. Get away from me! he screams as
he flees, though no one can see what is chasing him.
Following him up to the rooftop, you find the shivering
fourteen-year-old boy, barefoot and pajama-clad,
being confronted by an eerie starfish-like creature
almost as big as he is.
Storyteller Goals
The goal of the Dreamer is to get Lon to go
over the edge of the rooftop and fall to his death.
It will do everything in its power to keep Lon
from leaving the rooftop and to keep the interlopers from getting to its prey. Keep Lon terrified
and keep the others from helping him.
Character Goals
Lon is not crazy; that much becomes clear as
a ghostly starfish creature confronts the group
and tries to make Lon jump from the top of the
penthouse building. The characters main goal
is to get Lon down from the rooftop and back
into the relative safety of the penthouse.
SOCIAL
The characters secondary goal is to stop the

Dreamer. They can do this either by trying to kill or
by keeping Lon safe from it for at least two more days.
(The characters are unlikely to know about the tenday restriction unless theyve done some research. If
the characters think to make Lon unconscious for a
couple of days, that will do the trick as well.)
Actions
The Dreamers main focus is Lon and getting
Lon to fall off or run off the top of the roof. As
such, it will first try to keep Lon focused on it.
If Lon keeps getting distracted by the player
characters, the Dreamer will try to get the player
characters to flee from the scene by terrifying
them. If it succeeds in this and Lon dies, it disappears to find new prey elsewhere.
Pay Attention to Me
Dice Pool: Power + Finesse (dice pool 6)
versus the victims Resolve + Composure
More information on the Dreamers Bemuse
Hindrances (Dreamer): The Dreamer is visible (-1); attempting to bemuse any targets who
are not its chosen victim (-1).
Help (Dreamer): None.
Roll Results
dramatic failure, the Dreamer not only fails to
bemuse its victim, Lon is able to flee from it and
will feel the need to flee the scene itself. The
creature will return no sooner than one hour later.
If Dreamer dramatically fails to bemuse anyone
other than Lon, it will be unable to use that power
against that person for the rest of the scene. If
the player of the victim rolls a dramatic failure,
they are fully in the Dreamers thrall and cannot
act against it for the rest of the scene (or until
somehow brought out of the bemusement).
on the rooftop
23
Failure: The Dreamer fails to bemuse its target.

Success: The Dreamer bemuses Lon and can
attempt to terrify him into recklessly fleeing. If
the Dreamer bemuses someone other than Lon,
they lose their next action due to supernatural
distraction.
Exceptional Success: If the Storyteller rolls
an exceptional success, Lon will be fully in the
Dreamers thrall, and nothing less than a physical removal from the rooftop will turn Lons attention from the Dreamer to a player character.
If the Dreamer gets an exceptional success in
bemusing someone other than Lon, they are
unable to act against Lon or the Dreamer for the
rest of the scene unless supernaturally brought
out of the bemusement. If the player of the victim rolls an exceptional success, the Dreamer
cannot use its power against the victim for the
rest of the scene.
Run for Your Life!

versus the victims Wits + Composure
More information on the Dreamers Terrify
power can be found on p. 21-22.
Hindrances (Dreamer): The Dreamer is visible and horrible (-1); terrify any targets that
arent its chosen victim (-1).
Help (Dreamer): None.
Roll Results
dramatic failure, the Dreamer not only fails to
terrify its victim, but Lon is able to escape. The
monster will disappear, but return no sooner
than one hour later. If the Dreamer dramatically
fails to terrify anyone other than Lon, it will be
unable to use that power against that person for
24
the rest of the scene. If the player of the victim

rolls a dramatic failure, they spend the scene
running around blindly (and potentially into a
dangerous situation).
Failure: The Dreamer fails to terrify its target.
Success: The Dreamer terrifies Lon, causing
him to run around blindly (which will very likely
mean off the rooftop). If the Dreamer terrifies
someone other than Lon, they spend their next action fleeing the scene due to supernatural fear.
an exceptional success, Lon will be completely
terrified and flee off the edge of the rooftop immediately. If the Dreamer gets an exceptional
success in terrifying someone other than Lon,
they spend the rest of the scene fleeing due to
supernatural fear. If the player of the victim
rolls an exceptional success, the Dreamer cannot use its power on the victim for the rest of
the scene.
Consequences
If the player characters take more that couple
of minutes to get to the rooftop, Lon will have
already jumped to his death by the time they get
there. If the player characters succeed in scaring the Dreamer from the scene, the creature
will redouble its attack in an hour or two. If the
player characters do not succeed in keeping
the creature from getting Lon to kill himself
before they see the creature, Joe will blame the
characters for their failure and could potentially
become a reoccurring antagonist. If the player
characters do not succeed in keeping the creature from getting Lon to kill himself but they
see the creature and can describe the creature
in detail, Joe will consider them failures (if he
even believes them), but probably wont go out
of his way to go after them.
IfIfFour
Lucky,
FourisisLucky
Five Must
Be Luckier
Luckier
Five
MustBe
Look what I found. Jane showed Tyler the
five-leaf clover.
Uh, five-leaf clovers are bad luck. He squinted
his eyes at small quintet of leaves.
No. Ive heard that if four-leaf clovers are lucky,
five-leaf clovers are even luckier. You can make a
wish on them.
Tyler shook his head. I dont think so. He
paused and then breathed out, Whoa! Look at
that thing!
Jane turned to see what her boyfriend was pointing
at. In the clover at the edge of their picnic blanket
was a large cockroach-like creature about six inches
long. When she saw it, she gave a gasp and wrinkled
up her nose. Ew! Its a Palmetto bug!
The bug reared back on its hind legs and gave
a screech from a disturbingly human-looking
face. Behind it, a swarm of similar creatures
dug their way out of the ground, and the ground
at the edge of the picnic blanket was suddenly
a mass of moving black bodies. As one they
spread their wings, took to the air in an angry
chittering sound and dove at the girl holding the
five-leaf clover.
Picking a five-leaf clover is unlucky.

If you ask people about the origin of the saying
that picking a five-leaf clover is bad luck, some
people may say instead that since a four-leaf
clover is lucky, a rarer five-leaf clover must be
even luckier.
In reality, no one is quite sure where the origins of either proverb came from, but the first
written warnings of them appeared in medieval
Britain. These tales warned of black fairies
that came from clover patches all over Britain.
Since then, cryptozoologists have rediscovered
these creatures and the danger they pose to the
unwary world that lives above them.
Goblin Roach
Background: The Goblin Roach is as to a
cockroach as a human is to a chimpanzee; cousins, perhaps, but an altogether different creature.
Rediscovered again and again over the centuries,
the one thing that cryptozoologists and occult
researchers have determined is that the Goblin
Roach is a creature that just wants to be left
alone. However, if you disturb their home, they
must defend their territory and will do so with
great vehemence and malice.
Goblin Roaches are a hive-mind swarm, linked
telepathically to a single leader. While most hive
based creatures center around a queen, in this
case, it is a king figure who leads the hive in both
day-to-day life and into battle. While the five-leaf
clover is a rarity in nature, it does occur naturally as
well as artificially. The king of the Goblin Roaches
secretes a chemical in the clover, above the hidden
hive, that causes the five-leaf clover to grow. This is
a territorial marker to all other Goblin Roaches. If
the king of another Goblin Roach swarm wants to
muscle in on anothers territory, he rips the five-leaf
clover from the ground, removing the territorial
marker with the current kings scent markings on it.
This is start of the challenge. The two swarms will
fight until one king is dead. At that time, either the
two swarms will merge or the losing swarm will flee
with a temporary king in charge. How the king of the
Goblin Roaches is chosen is still a mystery.
There are two ways to protect oneself from the
Goblin Roach swarm when it is intent on destroying you. The first way is to submerge oneself in a
body of water. A Goblin Roach hates water and
thus will end its pursuit at the shore and eventually lose interest. The second is to immediately flee
beyond the borders of the Goblin Roaches domain.
How one discovers the borders of the creatures
domain is unknown.
If four is lucky five must be luckier
25
Description: A Goblin
Roach is between five and
seven inches long and reminds observers of a cross
between a Palmetto bug and a small humanoid with
wings. It has a shiny black carapace and six limbs
in addition to its translucent black wings. The two
back limbs are the strongest and most muscled, and
allow the creature to stand upright in an intimidation pose. The two middle limbs are the smallest,
each ending in a venomous stinger. The two upper
limbs are the most articulated and end in pinchers
for fine manipulation. The head of a Goblin Roach is
vaguely humanoid and flat with large black eyes and
a large mouth with needle-like teeth. For the most
part, the Goblin Roach walk around on the front
and back limbs, allowing the stingers free motion
to sting prey animals.
Storytelling Hints: The Goblin Roach is alien in
thought and deed. They are a hive mind. Speak to
one, you speak to them all and all of them listen
to the king. The king will always be the member of
the Goblin Roach that is front and center of things.
Thus, if you can manage to speak to one of them, the
king will be the one answering you.
26
if four is lucky five must be luckier
The Goblin Roach swarm just wants to be left

alone to live their lives in peace. They are not an
aggressive swarm like killer bees or other expansionist
insects. That is because they are more than
an insect. They are sentient creatures with
simple drives. The biggest drive is to protect
their home territory from all invaders. They identify the invaders by those who rip their territorial
marker (the five-leaf clover) out of the ground or
those who try to dig up their underground hive.
Once the challenge has been given, the Goblin
Roach swarm will not stop attacking until the challenger (the one who pulled the five-leaf clover or
broke into the hive) and anyone with her are either
dead or driven off of Goblin Roach territory, or
their king is dead. If the Goblin Roach swarm loses
six or more health points, the king can be considered
dead and the swarm will stop attacking.
Their attacks come in the form of biting and poisoning. A poisoned creature will become paralyzed
over time based on the amount of venom in their
system. If the enemy is killed, the creatures will continue to inject the poison into the corpse so that the
innards will liquefy and be turned into sustenance
that the Goblin Roach can suck into themselves
through needle-like teeth.
Resolve 3
Stamina 3
Composure 2
Mental Skills: None
Physical Skills: Athletics 4, Survival 4
Social Skills: Intimidate 4
Merits: None
Willpower: 5
Morality: N/A
Virtue: N/A
Vice: N/A
Health: 10
Initiative: 6
Defense: 2
Speed: 12
Size: 6
Armor: 1
Powers: Swarm, Bite and Poison

Mage: The Goblin Roach creatures are considered cryptids and follow the cryptid rules (Mage:
the Awakening, pp. 338-340).
Changeling: Despite the name, the Goblin Roach is not a Hedge creature, though you may
change that for your chronicle.
Special Powers
Goblin Roaches have three basic powers:
Swarm, Bite and Poison. These attacked are
used primarily for feeding, but they are also very
effective forms of combat.
Swarm (Dexterity + Athletics): The entire
swarm of thousands of Goblin Roaches targets
a single individual and swarms her, flying
around her face to blind, landing on her to
bite or sting and working to incapacitate her
in the quickest way possible. This is usually
used to bring down larger prey but is effective
on enemies. Those that have been swarmed
are at a -2 perception penalty and -1 to rolls
using Dexterity.
Bite (Strength + Athletics victims
Defense): Representing an entire swarm of
Goblin Roaches attacking at once and attempting to bite. With a successful roll, some
are going to succeed. The number of successes
represents the number of Goblin Roaches biting the victim at 1 bashing per bite. This may
be soaked normally.
Poison (Dexterity + Athletics victims
Defense): Representing an entire swarm
of Goblin Roaches attacking at once and
attempting to sting a victim with their
poisonous stingers. With a successful roll,
some are going to succeed. The number of
successes represents the number of Goblin
Roaches stinging the victim with a paralyzing toxin. Use the poison rules in the
World of Darkness Rulebook, pp. 180-181
(Toxicity level 4, and resisted by Stamina
+ Resolve as a reflexive action). When all
the victims health points are gone, the
victim is paralyzed. If left unmolested, the
paralyzed victim will be able to move again
within 24-36 hours.
Story Idea:
Encounter in the Clover
Caleb and Rob were doing what two
boys usually do on a sunny day in a wilderness park: wandering, horsing around and
generally having a good time. They had
the run of the area as long as they stayed
within the boundaries set up by both sets
of parents which amounted to dont get
lost, dont bother anyone and dont burn
down the forest.
Well, they werent lost. They knew exactly
where they were. They were far enough away
from the beaten path next to a small pond that
they couldnt bother anyone, and the magnifying
glass was only good for roasting ants and little
bugs. And that was just what Caleb was intent
on doing as soon as he found an anthill in all
of the clover.
But there were no anthills to be had, just
clover all over the glade. Hey! I found a fourleaf clover, Rob called to his friend. Thats
good luck.
Bet I can find more of them than you can.
No way.
Yes way.
If I win, I get the magnifying glass for a whole
week, Rob challenged.
Caleb thought for a moment and then nodded.
If I win, I get your bike for a week.
Youre on!
The two boys began their search for the
good luck charm in the form of the fourleaf clover while the Goblin Roach hive
labored peacefully in the ground beneath
them.
goblin roach-Story idea
Encounter in the clover
27
Unlucky Little Boys

MENTAL
PHYSICAL
Overview
Character Goals
In a lull in the story while the player characters are going from one scene to another or
while they are simply enjoying themselves in the
great outdoors, the characters hear the terrified
screams of children. It could be while they are
in a hurry to something else, or it could be that
this is a way to introduce new Storyteller characters (or player characters for that matter) to the
group through the children and their parents.
The main character goal should be to rescue

the two boys before they are killed. One of them,
Caleb, is paralyzed from the Goblin Roach toxin.
The other has been harmed a little but is still
able to move.
The secondary goal for the characters is to find
out more about the Goblin Roaches. What set
them off? What are they? Obviously, these are
not normal bugs.
The third goal is for the characters to decide if
the Goblin Roach hive is too big of a threat to
be allowed to live. Their hive is near a growing
wilderness park and while it is currently off the
beaten path, its proximity to the lake makes it
prime vacationer territory.
Description
The screams of children pierce the air. Running
through the trees, you break into a beautiful glade and
a horrific scene. Before you, two boys are swatting
at what must be thousands of bugs huge ones at
least six inches long and glossy black. The children are
blinded by the onslaught and are unable to find their
way out of the black mass. You can see small rivulets
of blood running down their faces and arms where these
insects have bitten them. One of the bugs flies up to
you and hovers briefly before your face, letting you get
a good look at it before one of the boys lets out another
scream and falls over. His small body is immediately
covered in a blanket of glossy black carapaces.
Storyteller Goals
The goal of the Goblin Roach attack is to
introduce an unexpected threat to the characters that has nothing to do with their current
story. The Goblin Roaches are uncommon bugs
and generally keep to themselves. Saving the
children will allow the characters to meet new
Storyteller characters who may or may not be
part of a greater story in the future.
The Goblin Roaches have two goals that
amount to the same thing: Protect their territory. They can do this by killing the interlopers
(the boys and now the characters who have
come to help the boys) or by running them off
of their territory (the clover patch).
28
SOCIAL
if four is lucky five must be luckier
Rescuing Caleb
Dice Pool: Dexterity + Athletics (dice pool
8) the victims Defense
Action: Instant
Saving the paralyzed boy, Caleb, will
bring a much greater chance of the characters being poisoned, as he is covered in
Goblin Roaches. More information on the
Goblin Roaches Poison power can be found
on p. 27.
Hindrances (Roaches): The Goblin Roach
stingers cannot pierce Armor 3 or above. If the
Goblin Roach king is killed, the attack stops
immediately.
Help: None.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The Goblin Roaches not
only fail to poison their victim, but there is
something about her that makes her unpalatable to the Goblin Roach swarm. The Goblin
Roaches will choose a new victim on the next
turn and ignore the first victim for the rest of
the scene.
Failure: The Goblin Roaches fail to poison

its victim.
Success: The Goblin Roaches poison its
victim, Toxicity level 4. Resisted by Stamina +
Resolve as a reflexive action.
Exceptional Success: Not only have the Goblin Roaches poisoned its victim, the paralysis
occurs immediately.
Rescuing Rob
Dice Pool: Strength + Athletics (dice pool
7) the victims Defense
Action: Instant
Saving the flailing boy, Rob, comes with it the
much greater chance of being bitten. But since
hes not the boy with the five-leaf clover in his
hand, he is the swarms secondary priority. More
information on the Goblin Roaches Bite power
can be found on p. 27.
Hindrances (Roaches): The Goblin Roach
stingers cannot pierce Armor 3 or above. If the
Goblin Roach king is killed, the attack stops
immediately.
Help: None.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The Goblin Roaches not
only fail to bite their victim, but there is something about him that makes him unpalatable to
the Goblin Roach swarm. The Goblin Roaches
will choose a new victim on the next turn and
ignore the first victim for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Goblin Roaches fail to bite
their victim.
Success: The Goblin Roaches bite their victim,
causing 1 bashing bite per number of successes.
Exceptional Success: The Goblin Roaches bite
their victim, causing 1 bashing bite per number of successes. The victim also develops an immediate allergic
reaction to the bites in the form of incapacitating
swelling, itching and hives that adds a -3 penalty to all
his actions until the allergic reaction is dealt with.
Consequences
If the characters choose to ignore the screams
of the children, both children will die. If the
characters save the children, they are lauded as
heroes by the childrens parents and the community, giving an opportunity to be introduced
to new Storyteller characters for future stories.
unlucky little boys
29
Only
Children
Only the
the Children
of
Autumn
of Autumn
Oh, hey, this is gorgeous, Julie said as she held
up the opal ring. Can I borrow it?
Kimberly paused in her sorting of clothing for her
best friend to borrow, Uh it was my moms, and
its probably too fragile to wear. Besides, you werent
born in October.
So? She slipped the opal ring on and admired
the rainbow reflection of light within the gemstone.
She smiled at the shimmer of beauty.
Its bad luck to wear an opal if you werent born
in October.
Oh whatever, Julie thought. There she goes on
her superstitious bit. Julie waggled the bejeweled
hand at her best friend. Why? Its pretty. I want
to wear it.
I dont know. I just know thats what they say.
Well, they can go jump in a lake. Julie said.
So, can I wear it or not?
It is bad luck for those not born in October

to wear opals.
The traditional gemstone for October is opal
the zodiacal stone for Libra. It is a common belief
that wearing opal, if it is not your birthstone, will
bring bad luck to the wearer. In ancient times, an
elemental researcher discovered the existence of the
opals elemental spirit and simply called the spirit
within it Opallios, after the stone. At the time, he
was uncertain if Opallios was an angel, a demon or
a spirit, but he was certain that the spirit came from
the opal stone to bless some and to curse others. The
unnamed sage wrote his findings in a document that
Stephen Ashmead, a noted occultist, later found,
translated and expanded upon in the 14th century.
It is his research that tells the story of the spirit
of the stone going from a benign creature to one
of malicious intent. Ashmead dubbed this spirit
Autumne (aw-TUM-nay) while researching its
origins and its connection to this beautiful and
30
only the children of autumn
precious stone. After years spent communing with

Autumne, he put his findings down on paper and
retired to a home for the wealthy and insane.
Autumne
Quotes: Who dares disobey my command? Only
the children of autumn may wear my sigil! Now you
will pay for your disrespect.
Debase yourself before me. Beg for my forgiveness and mercy!
Swear upon your life and soul that you will obey
my edict. Swear it or die!
Background: Man has valued the veins of milky
white stone that shimmer rainbow colors in the
light since time immemorial. However, another
attractor to this stone is the spirit that resides deep
within it. No one knows where it came from, but
the spirit within the opal stone is very real, and he
is jealous of whom he bestows his blessings upon.
For a long time, the opal was thought to bring
luck and good fortune to the children of autumn,
or those born in October. This much appears to be
true. The opal was so valued for this mystical boon
that soon people forgot its one requirement the
month of birth. The Autumne spirit, once generous and fair, became embittered at this abuse and
withdrew his boon to the world because so many
disrespected him. Over time, this withdrawing of
boon became an active malevolence towards those
who defied his edict whether they knew of it
or not. For hundreds of years, Autumne actively
hunted and harmed those who wore the opal
without having the right.
Although Autumne sightings are very rare,
most encounters with the spirit end in death
for the human wearing the opal. Only the truly
penitent edict-breakers live through their encounter with Autumne and most of those come
away scarred, paranoid and insane.
Description: This elemental spirit always

appears in fine dress of the current age (the
flashier, the better). He is tall and imposing
with long hair and opalescent eyes. His hands
are twice as large as they should be, ending
in sharp talons. His hair and clothing flutter
in a wind only he can feel.
Storytelling Hints: Most modern day people
attribute the bad luck of wearing opals to the
soft stones tendency to break. This complete
lack of respect and care for his edict has filled
the Autumne with rage and hate for mortal
man. Only his children of autumn are
spared some of this maliciousness.
There are times when Autumnes
rage is too much and he must seek out
an edict-breaker to get his revenge on. He
prefers to appear to his victim when she
is alone so he will have her full attention.
Most frequently, he will attempt to murder
her only after telling her what she has done
wrong. He does this to give his victims a
chance to repent. Even if they do repent,
he will slay them if he does not feel they are
sincere enough. If they do not apologize, or if
they attempt to flee or attack him, he will tear
them from limb to limb.
Autumne is impatient, imperious and full of
rage. Every word should be malicious and degrading. However, he can be reasoned with. He will
listen for the apology, but he is judgmental and
generally unforgiving. After his vicious onslaught,
the unlucky opal-wearer will have one chance
to apologize and beg for forgiveness or mercy.
Autumne will then judge her on her words and
sincerity. It must be an impressive and sincere
debasement for Autumne to leave them alive. If
she is sincere enough, he will let her go free with
a warning, but the next encounter will mean immediate death.
Also, if a child of Autumn becomes a part of
the encounter with Autumne, he will listen to
them with a greater patience and mercy.
Resolve 3
Stamina 3
Composure 4
Mental Skills: None

Physical Skills: Brawl 3
Social Skills: Empathy 4, Intimidation 4,
Persuasion 4, Subterfuge 3
Merits: None
Willpower: 7
Morality: N/A
Virtue: Hope
Vice: Wrath
Health: 8
Initiative: 8
Defense: 3
Speed: 12
Size: 5
Powers: Judge and Rend
31

Werewolf: The Autumne could be considered a spirit of the Earth (specifically opals). He is an
old spirit filled with anger towards humans who disrespect him. He generally ends up taking a
host (similar to the Hithimu) the mechanics presented assume that he has.
Special Powers
Autumne has two powers: Judge and Rend.
The first power is judge the edict breakers sincerity. The second power is to murder her for
her trespass against him.
Judge (Intelligence + Empathy versus opponents Wits + Subterfuge): Autumne will
first lambaste the edict breaker for wearing his
sigil when it is forbidden for those who are not
children of autumn. During the excoriation,
Autumne will be able to psychically judge the
sincerity of the person it is used on.
Rend (Strength + Brawl opponents Defense):
Autumnes main attack is a mental assault against
the edict breakers spirit. This damage manifests in
aggravated wounds. Autumne slashes at the edict
breaker with his over-large, taloned hands. While
his claws may seem to pass through the physical
form, he is really slashing the victims spirit.
Story Idea: Opal,

Opal, Burning Bright
Something is happening to Julie Steward. For
days, things seem to be deliberately trying to
hinder and hurt her. Shes noticed crosswalk
32
signs not working right, automatic door slamming themselves on her, elevators stopping
two or three inches too short and more. Worse
yet is the face that Julie is certain that a man
is following her. She keeps seeing him out
of the corner of her eye, staring and glaring
at her. More than once, shes sworn that she
heard him whisper, Why do you defy me?
in her ear.
Tonight she has a date with a guy shes been
waiting to go out with for what seems like forever
and things are the worst they have ever been.
Shes had a fight with her friend Kimberly about
that stupid opal ring she borrowed days ago.
Shes burned herself on her curling iron, and
the apartment elevator seemed determined to
eat her dress.
Undaunted, Julie has made it out to the
nightclub where shes to meet her date. She
ducks into a bathroom to powder her nose and
gather some courage. As she is about to leave,
the bathroom door slams shut and that voice
is back, but this time his demanding question
is not whispered in her ear. It is shouted at her
back. Turning around, Julie sees Autumne with
his opalescent eyes and huge, taloned hands
floating above her.
Persuading Autumne
MENTAL
PHYSICAL
SOCIAL
Overview
Actions
This takes place at a local club; whether the

characters are just relaxing or there for a specific
purpose depends on your needs. It can be used
to take a break from a long running story or to
introduce a bit of chaos into the game. They can
know Julie Steward or her friend Kimberly, or they
may all be complete strangers when Autumne attacks. This scene can also be used to introduce a
player character or a Storyteller character into the
chronicle just replace Julie or Kimberly.
Talking to Save Her Life
Description
The screams coming from the area of the ladies
room are muffled by the thudding beat of music on
the dance floor and the sound of hundreds of people
shouting to be heard over it. People are running for
help. People are coming to gawk. There is the sound of
glass shattering behind the closed and locked bathroom
door. In between the screams, the sobs of a woman
crying out, Im sorry! can be heard.
Storyteller Goals
The goal of Autumne is to extract a sincere
apology from Julie for her repeated disrespect to
him and his edict about who may and may not
wear the opal. If he extracts a sincere apology,
he will give her (and anyone watching) one
last warning that his sigil is for the children of
autumn only before leaving his host body.
However, if he does not get a sincere apology,
he will do everything in his power to kill the edictbreaker and those who would try to stop him from
gaining his just vengeance for such disrespect.
Once Julie is dead, he will leave his host body.
Character Goals
Save Julie from Autumne. Figure out what is
actually wrong, what Autumne is and either get
him the apology he wants or figure out at way
to banish or destroy him.
Dice Pool: Presence + Persuasion versus Autumnes Composure + Subterfuge (dice pool 7)
The player characters break into the bathroom
to find out what is going on and discover Julie
on the floor, unharmed but shaken and sobbing.
Autumne is standing above her, shouting at her
about her trespasses against him and his. More
information on the Autumnes Judge power can
be found on p. 32.
Hindrances (speaker): Not born in October (-1).
Help (speaker): Born in October (+2).
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: If the player of the speaker
rolls a dramatic failure, not only does the speaker
fail to convince Autumne to leave Julie alone,
but the spirit also becomes enraged and starts
attacking him. Autumne will do everything in
his power to kill the character. If the Storyteller
rolls a dramatic failure, Autumne returns the
opal ring and leaves Julie alone.
Failure: The character fails to convince Autumne
to leave them alone: The spirit ignores his words and
continues to try to extract an apology from Julie (or
to attack her if it has gotten to that point).
Success: The speaker convinces Autumne to
listen to either Julies apology or to the characters apology on her behalf.
Exceptional Success: If the player of the speaker
rolls an exceptional success, the speaker convinces
Autumne that the situation is all a complete
misunderstanding for which not only is Julie sincerely apologetic but that everyone in the room
is apologetic, and that they will spread the word
that Autumnes edict should not be disobeyed.
Autumne leaves Julie alone. If the Storyteller rolls
persuading autumne
33
an exceptional success, Autumne becomes enraged

and shifts his fury from Julie to the speaker.
Autumnes Rending
targets Defense
Action: Instant
If the player characters immediately attack
Autumne or they fail to persuade him that they
and Julie are sincerely sorry, Autumne will attempt to kill Julie. If the spirits host loses all
of his health points, he is temporarily banished
for 24 hours from Julie (if she continues to wear
the opal ring). If the opal in the ring is broken,
then Autumne is banished from Julie until she
wears another opal. More information on the
Autumnes Rend power can be found on p. 32.
Hindrances (Autumne): If the opal stone is
broken, Autumne will be temporarily banished.
Autumne is focused on Julie (-1 to Defense).
Help (Autumne): Combat rolls versus Julie
(as the edict breaker; +1)
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only does Autumne
fail to rend his victim, the victim is able to get
out of range. If the intended victim is Julie, she
is able to attempt to flee on the next action. If
the intended target is not Julie, Autumne will
return his full attention to her.
34
Failure: Autumne fails to harm his intended

target with his power.
Success: Autumne hits his intended target
with his power, doing lethal damage.
Exceptional Success: Not only does Autumne damage his intended victim, the victim
is knocked out for a number of turns equal to
6 - the victims Stamina. The victim takes no
other actions during this time. If the victim
is Julie, Autumne will continue to attack. If
the victim is not Julie, Autumne will return
to attack her.
Consequences
If the player characters are unable to save
Julie from being murdered by Autumne,
there is a good chance that one of them will
be blamed for it. However, without any witnesses willing to speak against the accused,
the case will fall through, opening up the
possibility of new enemies for the player
characters (including Julies family or law
enforcement officers).
On the other hand, if they do manage to save
Julie, she and Kimberly will be eternally grateful and may be called upon as allies for future
storylines. Also, this scene may open up the
possibility for another new ally (mundane or
supernatural) in the form of the clubs owner
and manager.
Glistering
or
Glistering or
Glittering
Neither
Glittering Neither
is Gold
is Gold
Dude! Look at this, Shane said as they entered

the next cave on their spelunking trip. It looks like
gold. A whole huge gold vein! Look at that shine.
Is that what gold looks in the wild? I thought itd be
more like a diamond in the rough. Dull and stuff.
No man, this is gold. Seriously. Im gonna
get me some. You know what this stuff is going
for an ounce?
Kevin shrugged but pulled out his rock pick, Not
a clue, but a lot, huh?
Yeah. A whole lot. Like hundreds of dollars an
ounce. Shane took aim with his own rock hammer
and started chipping away at the rock next to the
gold, accidentally striking a piece of the gold vein.
Kevin turned back from setting his backpack down
just in time to see the gold move and slither like a
snake. Dude! Watch out! But it was too late. The
previously solid vein of gold shot out from the rock
and wrapped a glittering noose around his friends
neck, cutting off his cry of surprise and pain.
All that glitters is not gold.

Shakespeare is the best-known writer to have expressed the idea that not all that glitters is gold that
not all that is beautiful is valuable. The Bard was by
no means the first to suggest this, however. The 12th
century French theologian Alain de Lille wrote Do
not hold everything gold that shines like gold. And
in 1553, Thomas Becon, in The Relikes of Rome: All is
not golde that glistereth. There is a much older version of this proverb from Old Norse that means that
which glitters may be deadly. It is a warning from
the Norse Viking explorers who first encountered the
creature they called Glitra on one of their explorer
expeditions. The creature looked like gold and lured
its prey in through its sparkle and shine. When the
prey touched it, it would snap out and capture the

hapless victim, absorbing him totally.
Glitra
Background: Gudrik Grmsson was the first
known person to record a description of the
Glitra. Grmsson wrote:
We found a good cave to camp in on the island
but then Ulfr found the gold in the wall. He started
digging the gold out but found it was not gold. It
was a creature that glittered like gold. The creature
ensnared Ulfr, broke his neck and pulled his body
into its maw. It was as if the creature was made
of congealed fat. Bjorn attacked the creature, but
his weapon first hit something hard and then was
sucked inside. We knew we were facing a monster
we did not understand. Ulfrs body was halfway
into the creature and I could see the signs of his
bones beneath the shimmering gold. It already had
one of us. I would not allow it to have more.
From time to time within the occult researchers
community, sightings of the Glitra are mentioned;
usually in conjunction with a missing person or a lost
pet in a mountainous or cavernous region. However,
no one has ever captured the creature for study, despite repeated attempts. Unfortunately for would-be
captors, the Glitra has the ability to become liquid
and escape through the smallest cracks in the wall
or floor. If necessary, the Glitra will leave its meal
behind if it feels it needs to escape. If it does not, it
will slowly dissolve the prey over a matter of hours,
absorbing its nutrients into itself.
It is content to live in dark places, eating the native fauna and, if its lucky, the occasional unwary
and unlucky miner, spelunker or hiker. Recently,
there has been a disturbing change in the Glitras
glistering or glittering neither is gold
35
known habitats. Ten years ago, Glitra began to

be found in the sewer systems of large cities in
Europe and the Americas. Occult experts and
cryptozoologists speculate this invasion of urban
sewer systems is due to the increasing scarcity of
ideal natural habitats for the creature.
Description: When the Glitra is perfectly still,
it looks like part of a stone wall or a mound of dirt
surrounding a large deposit of gold ore. It is shot
through with veins of gold that shimmer and shine.
When triggered, the Glitra is malleable and almost
gelatinous in movement and feel. Strong prehensile
golden tentacles ensnare its prey in a vice-like grip.
Storytelling Hints: Slow-moving, very strong and long-lived,

the Glitra lives to feed and feeds
to live. It has almost no discernable intellect. It doesnt have an
overwhelming hunger, but it is an
opportunity feeder. If something
like a rat or a rabbit or even an
unwary human comes along, it
captures, kills and eats the prey,
dissolving every last bit of the prey
that it can. The only things it does
not dissolve are metals and hard
plastics. Those are eventually spit
out and left behind.
The Glitra is not completely
sedentary. It does move slowly
around its domain, somewhat like
slow-moving lava. The only time it
does move quickly is when it produces its tentacles to capture and
kill prey or it is escaping a threat to
its life. If there are large creatures
moving about in its domain, the
Glitra will remain perfectly still
until one of the creatures triggers
its feeding response.
While a Glitra does not have
complex emotions, it does have
feelings. It feels pleasure while feeding, anger when
hurt and fear when cornered or overwhelmed.
When the characters encounter the Glitra, it will
appear as it always appears: as part of the structure
of the cave or tunnel as veins and deposits of gold.
It will only react when a character touches it and
then it will focus only on that character until another character touches it. If it is critically injured,
it will flee through small cracks in the wall and
floor of its territory.
Resolve 3

Vampire: The Glitra will not try to absorb the vampires dead flesh. Vampires are not
considered food.
Mage: The Glitra is considered a cryptid creature.
36

Stamina 6
Composure 4
Mental Skills: None
Physical Skills: Brawl 4, Stealth 5, Survival 4
Social Skills: None
Merits: None
Willpower: 7
Morality: N/A
Virtue: N/A
Vice: N/A
Health: 12
Initiative: 6
Defense: 2
Speed: 11
Size: 6
Armor: 5/5
Powers: Camouflage, Ensnare and Absorb
Special Powers
The Glitra has three powers: Camouflage,
Ensnare and Absorb. The first one is its natural
ability to hide, and is identical in function to the
Doliochthons power on p. 17. The second two
revolve around capturing and eating its prey.
Ensnare (Strength + Brawl victims Defense):
The Glitra is triggered to ensnare its prey when something as large as or larger than a mouse touches it.
Based on how hard the touch it (weight or striking)
as well as how big the prey is, the Glitra will shoot out
an appropriately sized tentacle to ensnare its victim,
doing crushing damage once captured. To break out
of being ensnared is the ensnared victims Strength +
Brawl the Glitras Strength. (See the grapple rules,
World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 157.)
Absorb (Stamina + Composure): Once the
prey is dead or incapacitated, the Glitra pulls the
prey into its mass and absorbs it at a damage rate
of one lethal health point per 15 minutes.
Story Idea: Somethings

Deadly in the Sewers
You think we got giant rats in the sewers?
The strangers voice and the even stranger
question catch your attention. Sure, you eaves-
drop. No one really expects their conversations

to be private in a crowded coffee shop. Nah,
man. Giant rats are in places like New York or
L.A. Not here.
Two sewer workers have gone missing in two
months. Listen to this. Tom Waterford, age 34,
and Chris Stone, age 23, have both gone missing
while inspecting underground sewer lines. Both
are married with children, and their spouses are
frantic to find the missing men. According to
the work roster at the Thompsons Plumbing
Services, on contract with the City, both men
were assigned to the J-line of sewer tunnels,
which runs under the City Hall building. When
contacted by this newspaper, neither City Hall
nor Thompsons Plumbing Services had a comment What do you think of that?
Creepy, but not giant rats. Id believe ghosts
before giant rats. I mean, the city is hundreds of
years old. Who knows what burial grounds are
down there? Or what the citys dug up?
Yeah. I guess youre right.
The two men leave the coffee shop, leaving behind the paper they had been reading.
You cannot help but take it and read the
story for yourself. Something about the story
gets to you. Maybe its the fact that both men
were in the prime of life. Maybe its the fact
that both men went missing while working
in the same sewer tunnel. Perhaps its the
fact that the sewer tunnel runs under the
middle of the city and City Hall. This may
need to be investigated.
Variations
For a World of Darkness or Hunter: the
Vigil game, one of the sewer workers was a
friend of a friend and you are asked to help
look for him.
For a Vampire: the Requiem game, one of
the sewer workers was a valuable ghoul.
For a Changeling: the Lost game, Chris
Stone, the younger missing man, was ensorcelled.
For a Werewolf: the Forsaken game, one
of the sewer workers was kinfolk.
For a Mage: the Awakening game, one of
the sewer workers was a Sleepwalker.
Glitra-Story idea Somethings deadly in the sewers
37
Nothing Floats Down Here

MENTAL
PHYSICAL
Overview
You and your friends are here in the sewer
looking for what happened to those missing
people. You have no idea what you are looking
for (besides those missing men), but part of you
is afraid that you will find it.
Description
While the stone walls arent damp and dripping,
they feel like they should be. The sewer tunnels are
dark, dimly lit by a fluorescent light stationed every
twenty feet or so. There are walkways on either side
of the river of sludge in the middle of the tunnel. The
constant sound of skittering rat paws lets you know
you are not the only ones to use this walkway. Up
ahead is a round tunnel junction that splits off into
four different directions. Near one of the smaller
tunnels openings is a plastic hardhat. Without picking
it up, you can see the name Stone stenciled on the
back of it. Shining your flashlight around, you catch
sight of something beautiful and golden glittering in
the flashlights beam.
Storyteller Goals
Tell a creepy tale of looking for trouble and
finding it. The Glitra is a powerful monster
with simple goals: to survive and to eat. It cannot be reasoned with and it will not stop unless
significantly damaged.
Character Goals
Find out what happened to the missing sewer
workers. Once theyve discovered the Glitra, the
secondary goal is to escape from it alive. Optionally, find and capture (or destroy) the creature.
Actions
All That Glitters
Dice Pool: Wits + Composure versus the
Glitras Wits + Stealth (dice pool 7)
38
SOCIAL

Most characters will not realize that the Glitra is
even there until they trigger its feeding reflex. More
information on the Glitras Camouflage power can
be found in the Glitras powers on p. 37.
Hindrances (character): The Glitra is
still (-1).
Help (character): The Glitra is in motion (+1).
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only does the person
looking for the Glitra not see it, she puts her
hand on it, immediately triggering its ensnare reflex. She is so surprised that she is caught fast.
Failure: The person looking for anything
strange does not find the creature, but does see
the gold deposit.
Success: The searcher realizes that the gold
deposit isnt what it seems.
Exceptional Success: Not only does she find
it, but she figures out just how big it is and can
keep track of it for the rest of the scene.
Escaping the Glitra

victims Defense. Once ensnared, victims
Strength + Brawl Glitras Strength (5).
Action: Instant
Once the feeding reflex is triggered, everyone
and everything is fair game. More information
on the Glitras Ensnare and Absorb powers can
be found on p. 37.
Hindrances: The Glitra is unaffected by powers that attack the mind, intellect or emotions
or any power that needs eye contact.
Help: For each target beyond the first (-1).
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only does the ensnared
victim not break free, her struggles push her
deeper into the Glitra where she cannot escape,
giving an additional -1 to all rolls.
Failure: The ensnared victim does not break

free and suffers crushing damage.
Success: The ensnared victim breaks free, but
is still the Glitras main target.
Exceptional Success: Not only does the
ensnared victim break free, but she moves far
enough away that the Glitra no longer targets
her. Instead, the Glitra will attempt to ensnare
the next closest person.
Consequences
If the characters do not take up the challenge
to search for the missing sewer workers, more
people will go missing. This will include more

sewer workers, a building inspector, a couple of
children and several bums.
If the characters do go looking for the missing sewer workers, they will find both mens
hardhats and some scattered belongings, which
they can return to the grieving spouses. After
the encounter with the Glitra, they may be
approached by a secret organization (such as a
Hunter compact or conspiracy) that will want
to know what really went on down there. Alternatively, they may be rewarded, either publicly
or privately.
nothing floats down here
39
Ashes
to Ashes
Ashes
Ashes to
Death
to
Death
Death to Death
Scott lifted the pan of water, intending to dump it
on the glowing coals nestled in the fireplace.
Stop! exclaimed Melissa. Dont.
Scott stopped and frowned. Dont what?
Dont douse the fire. Not now.
But were going to bed. I dont want leave the fire
going. Lord knows I dont want to be the schmuck
responsible for burning down a luxury cabin.
Melissa shook her head. Its bad luck to completely rake out or douse a fire before bed. There
should always be a few embers left burning. Thats
what my grandmama used to say.
Why?
She shrugged. I dont know. I just always did
as she said. Grandmama knew the old ways. She
moved over to the fire and started covering the glowing coals with ashes. This should keep them burning
and keep us from setting everything on fire.
Scott shook his head. All right, but I think
youre crazy.
It is bad luck to completely rake out a

hearth fire before retiring. A few embers
should always be left burning.
This saying comes from a time when some of
the coals of familys hearth were used to set the
fire in the new family home as a way of bring the
good luck of the old home into the new one. In
the past, the fire was physically and socially at the
center of the house and of a community. Some
stories claim that many domestic fires remained
burning continuously for hundreds of years.
The prosperity of the house or farm was
closely associated with a well-kept fire. The
fire was symbolic of life; if someone from the
house died, the fire was allowed to also die
and be rebuilt as a cleansing of the death
taint. If there was someone sick in the house,
every effort was made to ensure that the fire
40
ashes to ashes death to death
did not die by accident, to help keep the sick

person alive. It was especially important to
keep the fire going on May 1st or May Day
as a means of protecting the home year-round
from evil intentions.
If the hearth had to be repaired or cleaned,
then some of the old burning fire coals were
set aside in a bucket in order to replace them
when the repairs had been completed. It was an
indication of bad housekeeping to have to go to a
neighbor in the morning to ask for some burning
coals because your own fire had died out in the
night. No one liked letting a burning coal out of
a house for fear of giving away good luck.
One story of the origins of the superstition
tells of the mysterious death of a family burned
almost beyond recognition and covered in a
fine layer of ash despite having escaped their
burning home intact and unburned. Researchers would come to refer to the occurrence as an
ash-burn death and over time the malevolent
creature that caused these deaths became known
as an Ash-burn.
Ash-burn
Background: Fire has been integral to mans
survival for eons. It has been given religious significance both good and evil. What most people
do not realize is that fire is a pure elementpure
enough to protect this world from some of the
supernatural creatures who would do it harm. The
positive emotions and security associated with
hearth fires have been found to protect humans
from evil spirits and demons such as the Ash-burn.
While its not clear what attracts the Ash-burn to
our world or why they linger around hearth fires
in wait for them to go out, these demons tend to
account for many of the accidental house fires
that occur all over the world.
Description: The Ash-burn materializes as a small vortex of burning

ashes. They range from one to
four feet in height with the top of
the vortex ranging from one
to three feet in diameter.
Throughout the spinning
ash are disembodied eyes
glowing from yellow to
orange to red, resembling
burning coals.
Storytelling Hints:
The Ash-burn is a demon
that slowly gets smaller as
it burns. It lives to burn
and does so with great glee
and malice. The more living creatures it can burn to
death, the better. It has only
one harming attack but also
likes to use intimidation tactics
to herd its victims into the best
possible place to burn.
The Ash-burn are aggressive and
smart. Any attack on them is seen as
a challenge, and if there is more than
one Ash-burn manifested, they will all gang
up on the challenger and attack him without
hesitation. Otherwise, the Ash-burn are gleeful
fire-starters, throwing burning ash everywhere
until they burn themselves out, which happens
within an hour of them manifesting in our world.
They are vicious, quick and merciless.
The Ash-burn can be reasoned with mentally if you can keep them from covering you
with burning ash but in general, it would take
an Intimidation roll (versus their Resolve +
Composure) to coerce these creatures into dissipating. Water and fire extinguishers will do
1 point of lethal damage per pint of water or
3-second spray of extinguishing foam to the

Ash-burn, and cause them to be banished when
all of their health points are gone.

Vampire: Vampires need to make an immediate frenzy check to not flee the scene (Vampire:
the Requiem, p. 178). This is a fear frenzy versus fire, bonfire difficulty (Vampire: the Requiem, p.
180) for a vampire to resist the frenzy and take actions.
These creatures are not spirits and cannot be commanded in such a manner. However they
are demons, and are subject to powers and objects that affect demons.
Ash burn
41

Resolve 4
Stamina 3
Composure 3
Mental Skills: None
Physical Skills: Firearms (ash burst only) 4
Social Skills: Intimidation 3
Willpower: 7
Morality: N/A
Virtue: N/A
Vice: N/A
Health: 7
Initiative: 9
Defense: 5
Speed: 13
Size: 4
Armor: 4/4 (0/0 against water and extinguishers)
Power: Ash Burst
Special Powers
The Ash-burn has only one attack: the Ash
Burst. With each attack, it gets a little smaller but
that does not lessen the strength of its Ash Burst.
Ash Burst (Dexterity + Firearms): This is a
blast of burning hot ash that covers and sticks
to its target, setting clothing, hair, and paper
on fire almost immediately. Each blast does fire
damage (World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 180):
four lethal damage per turn of contact.
Story Idea:
Too Hot to Handle
Jesse and Jennifer have the best backyard BBQ
parties. There is always plenty of food, drink and
fun. You always meet someone new. You always
have a good time. The house is open and the
backyard is huge. Theres even a huge stone fire
pit for grilling. They never care if you end up
42
ashes to ashes death to death
spending the night because it got too late. They

usually dont even care if you end up passed out in
the backyard. On the morning after one of their
parties, you can be sure that you will be woken
up, escorted to the table and fed a great breakfast
(even if its 2 in the afternoon) and a bit of hair
of the dog that bit you, if you ask for it.
Tonight has been no exception. The booze
has flowed freely; the steaks, hamburgers and hot
dogs were perfectly made. The music was turned
down after 11pm but all of the neighbors are at
the party, too, so theres no one left to complain
about a wild party.
Man, who let the fire pit go out? Tim
asks, his voice only slightly slurred. I wanted
another burger!
As the first vortex of ash appears behind Tim,
those who look his way dont understand what
theyre seeing. As the hot coal eyes of the growing ash devil open, the realization of wrongness
dawns on the inebriated partygoers. Then, Tim
turns around and sees the Ash-burn floating in
front of him. There are too many hot glowing
coal eyes to count.
Holy shit, Tim breathes out just before the
Ash-burn blasts him full in the face with a wave
of burning ash. He shrieks in pain, his hair and
clothing on fire. The rest of the party erupts into
chaos as another one of the unholy ash vortexes
appears out of the dead fire pit.
You were there, having a good time with
some friends and strangers. Now this has
happened. They dont know about you or
the special things you do. Now you have a
choice: fight these ash monsters any way you
can and possibly reveal yourself or let them
run amok, killing people and burning the
neighborhood down.
Variations
If this is an Innocents game, it is a backyard slumber party and only one Ash-burn
will appear.
An Unholy Light
MENTAL
PHYSICAL
SOCIAL
Overview
Character Goals
Danger and disaster can strike at anytime;

especially when it is inconvenient. All the
characters wanted to do was have a good
time. Suddenly, that good time has become
a killing zone for some otherworldly creatures, and the choice becomes whether or
not to save these people and possibly reveal
yourself as something more than normal or
to let these monsters have their way. People
with power and skills have responsibilities
to those who do not. It goes along with the
territory, no matter how disruptive it can
be to your personal life. It is a sacrifice you
have to make.
The characters need to choose between protecting

their own anonymity and protecting innocents. Assuming they do the right thing and save the helpless,
their next goal is to stop the Ash-burn from hurting
anyone else. After that, theyll have to deal with the
aftermath of their secrets coming to light.
Description
The vortex of hot ash is alive and moving. Its
many glowing eyes spin within its whirling form. As
it moves away from the fire pit and the screaming
man, another dust devil of ash and glowing eyes rises
out of the fire pit, bringing more ash with it. The
two whirling tornados of death dance around each
other as they move closer and closer to a group of
huddled, frightened partygoers. You know that if you
dont do something now, they will be these monsters
next victims.
Storyteller Goals
Your first goal is to put the characters into
a situation where they must sacrifice their
anonymity in order to save some innocents.
Your second goal is to cause as much damage
as possible in a short amount of time. If the
characters attack, they will become the Ashburns target. If not, the innocent people, the
house and the surrounding property will be
burned to ash.
Ash Burst
Dice Pool: Dexterity + Firearms (dice pool 9)
Action: Instant
More information on the Ash-burns Ash
Burst power can be found on p. 42.
Hindrances: Target is within arms reach, and
can use Defense.
Help: A lot of objects in the backyard are
flammable.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only does the Ash-burn
miss with its Ash Burst, something about the intended victim causes every Ash-burn to shy away
from them and turn to another character.
Failure: The Ash-burn fails to hit with its
Ash Burst.
Success: The Ash-burn hits with its Ash Burst.
Exceptional Success: The Ash-burn not only
hits with its Ash Burst, it hits with extreme precision, ignoring armor (if the target is wearing
appropriate armor).
Consequences
If the characters flee (or, in the case of vampires,
are forced to flee), more than half the partygoers
will be murdered, the house and the two neighboring houses will be burned to the ground and those
that live will be driven insane with fear.
Story idea too hot to handle-an unholy light
43
Spirits of
Spirits
if
the
House
the House
Six year old Madeline twirled her umbrella in
the hallway as she entered. Nana! Look what I
can do!
Her grandmother came around the corner and
her smile disappeared. No! Close the umbrella.
Close it now! She looked around her house with a
fearful expression.
Madeline stared at her, the umbrella still open and
twirling. But, why Nana?
Because I said so! Her grandmother yanked
the umbrella from her small hand and closed
it. Seeing her granddaughters eyes go big and
round, threatening to spill tears down her face,
Nana knelt next to the girl. Because, child, you
insult the house spirits here. You tell them they
arent good enough. We dont want to do that,
do we?
No Nana.
No. We dont. Lets apologize to them for the
insult.
Madeline looked around the hallway and up the
stairs. Im sorry if I insulted you, house spirit. I
didnt mean to.
They both heard the closing of a door upstairs and
Nana smiled. See? They forgive you. Lets go have
some cookies.
It is bad luck to open an umbrella inside

a house.
Open an umbrella indoors and bad luck
will rain down on you. But why? There
are a couple schools of thought on this.
The most common theory stems from
the days when umbrellas, named for the
little shade they provided, were used
mainly as protection against the sun. To
open one indoors would be to insult the
sun god and invite his wrath on everyone
in your household.
44
spirits of the house
The second theory is that the umbrella is

a universal symbol for protection from the
storms of life. Umbrellas have been around
for over 3,000 years. The belief that to
open an umbrella indoors brings bad luck
may have been started because people saw
it as an act that insulted the spirits of the
household by implying that their protection
was inadequate. If you were to open one in
your home, the household guardian spirits
might think you felt their protection was
insufficient. Their indignant abandonment
of their ungrateful charges would lead to
misfortune for everyone in the house.
Domos
Quotes: Treat us well and your house will never
need for repair. Treat us poorly and your house will
never know bliss.
Why must you insult us? We do not deserve such
disrespect. We care for you and our home.
Insult us, do you? Think we cannot care well
enough for you that you need that thing? Well show
you what your life is like uncared for.
Background: Once an umbrella, a symbol of protection, is opened in a home, the Domos (the term
is the same for one or more of these spirits) see this
is as a direct challenge to their skills as keepers of
the house. Insulted, they allow things to go wrong
in the house that, until then, had not been a problem before. Plumbing breaks. Ovens refuse to light.
Doors stick open or closed and the plants die.
Then things get worse. The house cat is
found dead. Sharp pins and needles somehow
wind up on chairs. Food spoils at an alarming
rate. People trip down the stairs over nothing.
The home that once was a blessing becomes a
curse, all for the lack of understanding and an
unintended insult.
The Domos do not live in

every house. Usually they
live in older houses that
have a connection
to the land through
gardens and wells.
They also prefer
houses with history
or homes that have
had a single owner
or stayed in a single
family for decades or
more. These houses
have a sense of spirit and
life that new homes do not.
Those who are respectful
of the house have good
lives. Those who are not
tend to move away as soon
as they can.
For the Domos, it is their right to choose
a home to live in and care for. It is a privilege
for the dwellers of the home to have the Domos
around, because they care for the home and
those within it. On the other hand, never make
the mistake of assuming a Domos is subservient
to its human charges. The Domos chooses to
be there and woe unto to those who insult or
displease them.
Description: Domos are small, wizenedlooking creatures that stand between one
and two feet tall. They are humanoid in
appearance with leathery skin and solid
black eyes. Their heads appear slightly too
large for their small bodies. They wear no
clothing and appear to be androgynous.
Their hands end in sharp, short claw-like
nails that look dangerous.
Storytelling Hints: Having a Domos creature
can be heaven or hell for a household. They
are subtle at first when making their displeasure
known. But as time goes on and no apology or
gesture of respect happens, the Domos turn
from blessings into curses. Instead of taking
their anger out on the house, they start taking it out on those who live within it. When
a Domos reaches its breaking point, they will
appear and attack the houses owners directly
with poisoned claws.
Once manifested, a
Domos can be reasoned
with, especially if the homeowners appear frightened or
cowed by them. Sincere apologies and promises to
never disrespect the house or the Domos will go a
long way, but only if everyone present agrees with a
proper attitude. If even one person is snide, snarky
or unrepentant, all of the Domos will attack.
Household objects will not harm a Domos,
but things from outside the house will. For
example, a kitchen butcher knife will always
miss the Domos, while a hunting knife can hit
and do damage. If a Domos is damaged to the
point of death, it will disappear, but there is a
chance that it will reappear another night to
attack again.
Willpower: 6
Initiative: 3
Defense: 5
Speed: 11
Size: 4
Corpus: 5
Essence: 10
Powers: Break, Curse and Poisonous Claws
domos
45

Changeling: The Domos are goblins from the Hedge and are affected by Contracts.
Changeling characters have a +1 to Investigation, Empathy and Expression rolls and a -1
penalty to Intimidation rolls.
Special Powers
The first two powers of the Domos, Break and
Curse, are designed to first attack the house and
then the owners. The third power, Poisonous
Claws, is a direct attack by the Domos itself.
Break (Power + Finesse target objects Durability): The house is an extension of the Domos.
The Domos know it inside and out. They know
exactly where to start making things break to
annoy or distress the house dwellers.
Curse (Power + Finesse targets Resolve):
When the Domos are ready to curse those within
the house, they to call upon the natural magic in
the area to do so, increasing their effectiveness.
Every success rolled by the Domos a 1 penalty
to the target for the duration of the scene. Each
targets Curse expires at the end of the scene
and a new Curse on the same target will start
from 0 successes.
Poisonous Claws (Power + Finesse targets
Defense): The claws of the Domos are slightly
curved and poisonous. If clawed by the Domos,
the poison goes to work immediately, coursing through the victims veins, doing damage
over time as per normal toxicity rules (World
of Darkness Rulebook, pp. 180-181) with the
toxicity level of 5. The poison cannot be healed
naturally, but the Domos can heal the poison
themselves if given enough motivation.
Story Idea:
Home Sweet Home
John and Ellen Harper inherited the beautiful Victorian home from her late grandmother. The small inheritance that came with it
paid the taxes and the couple is grateful for
one less expense as they prepare to welcome
another child.
46
At first, everything is perfect. Then, once

the rainy season hits, things start to break. First
its the doorknob to the screen door. Then the
sinks in the house start to drip all of them,
on the same night. Nothing the Harpers do fixes
this problem. Next to go is the vacuum cleaner,
followed by the dishwasher, the oven and the
garbage disposal. Each of things is an expensive
hassle to repair.
Then things go from bad to worse. Knives
somehow end up point-up in the dishwasher,
no matter how careful the couple is. Glasses
tumble silently to the floor in the middle of
the night, causing bare feet to be sliced on
the shards in the morning. Thumbtacks appear in chairs point-up. Scalding hot water
comes out of the cold tap, and unseen obstacles in the hallways throughout the house
are causing their daughter Julia countless
cuts and bruises.
It is to the point that the Harpers now
believe their home is haunted. Ellens inexplicable fall down the stairs though she
swears she felt a push has the family at
its wits end. They have called for help from
paranormal investigators and psychics to help
find out what has happened to their once
lovely home. Ellen is four months pregnant
and doesnt want to move yet again. She just
wants whoever, whatever, is haunting the
house to go away.
Variations
If this is a Vampire game, Mr. Harper
could be a ghoul.
If this is an Innocents game, the Storyteller character most involved is the Harpers child, Julia. She has asked her friends
over to help figure why the house is mad at
her family.
Hostile Natives
MENTAL
PHYSICAL
SOCIAL
Overview
Character Goals
Someone important to the group has asked

them to help with the Harpers home. The attacks by the Domos are becoming increasingly
more violent, and the Harpers are considering
moving from what was once their dream home.
When the characters arrive, it is raining.
Figure out whats wrong with the house. Find

out what the Harpers have done to upset the
Domos, and fix the situation.
Description
You have entered the foyer of the Harpers home.
As you shake the rain from your coats, you see pairs
of galoshes and two open umbrellas already in the
hallway. You can leave your coats and umbrellas
here, Ellen Harper says as she gestures to the coat
rack in the hallway. And leave your umbrellas open
to dry. I dont mind if they drip.
As you all shuffle about, taking off wet overcoats,
you begin to hear the sound of breaking glass from
upstairs and from the room at the end of the hallway.
It sounds as if someone is having a temper tantrum
and is taking his or her anger out on anything
breakable. The mirror in the hallway suddenly
shatters in a startling shower of shards, and a new
voice joins the cacophony of sound.
Leave your umbrellas open on in the hallway?
Why dont you just invite them to shit on the floor
and be done with it?
Looking, you see a small creature standing next
to a closet at the end of the hallway. Its coal-black
eyes bore into you. It seems to shake with rage as
a second and then a third small humanoid creature
exits the closet.
Storyteller Goals
Introduce the idea that being nice to a monster could be the easy way out of a potentially
fatal situation. The Domos are furious but intelligent. They can be reasoned with and reasoning
with them is not only the easy way, it is the most
beneficial way. This also provides the characters
a chance to think on their feet.
Actions
Calming the Domos
Dice Pool: Presence or Manipulation + Persuasion
vs. the Domos Finesse + Resistance (dice pool 3)
The characters have a chance to talk
some sense into both the Domos and the
Harper family.
Hindrances: No Occult knowledge (-1).
Help: Encyclopedic Knowledge (+1).
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only does the speaker
fail to convince the Domos to leave the Harpers alone, but the Domos becomes enraged and
attacks the speaker.
Failure: The speaker fails to convince the
Domos to leave the Harpers alone, and the
spirit continues with its current course of action,
berating Ellen Harper until either someone can
persuade the Domos the Harpers meant no harm
or the situation escalates into violence.
Success: The speaker convinces at least one
of the Domos that the Harpers did not mean
any harm or disrespect.
Exceptional Success: The speaker not only
convinces all of the Domos that the Harpers
meant no harm or disrespect, but is so eloquent
that the Domos forgive the Harpers without forcing an apology. Moreover, the spirits are willing to
talk more about themselves and their world.
Fighting the Domos

Action: Instant
story idea home sweet home- hostile natives
47
If talking fails, the fighting begins. The

Domos will slash and claw with their poisoned talons. More information on the
Domos Poisonous Claws power can be
found on p. 46.
Hindrances: The Domos are immune to any
household items used as weapons.
Help: None.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only will the Domos
miss with a poisoned claw attack, but it stumbles,
causing it to lose its action next turn.
Failure: The Domos misses with its poisoned
claw attack.
Success: The Domos hits with its poisoned claw attack, doing damage. Follow the
normal toxicity rules (World of Darkness
Rulebook, pp. 180-181) with the toxicity
level of 5.
48
Exceptional Success: Not only does the

Domos hit with its poisoned claw attack, doing
damage, the victim automatically fails their next
roll to resist the poison.
Consequences
If the characters manage to talk the Domos into
forgiving the Harpers for their trespasses, the Harpers will offer to let the characters use the house or
rent a room in the house as a hiding place. If the
characters banish the Domos through combat, the
Harpers will also offer to rent the house to the characters at a much-reduced rate for the same reason.
If one (or more) of the characters is poisoned
in a combat with the Domos, they will have to
deal with the mystical poison. Ways to deal with
it include calling the Domos and begging them
for help and promising respectful treatment of
them and the house, and finding a specialist who
knows about such matters.
Smellthe
theFlowers
Flowers
Smell
but
Don'
t
Take
One
but Don't Take One
James ran up the walkway from the bus station.
He was already late, and Shannon would kill him if
he walked into the house late AND empty-handed
on their anniversary.
Missing one bus had made him ten minutes too
late to reach the flower shop before it closed. Thats
why grabbing the bouquet from the graveyard
seemed like a good idea at the time. He felt a bit
weird about giving his wife some corpses flowers,
but there was nothing to be done about it now;
Shannon was in the doorway and she was beaming at him.
You did remember! Oh, honey, thank you.
Theyre lovely, she said as she reached for the
bouquet in his hands.
Too late now, and its not like the dead
persons gonna be able to use them, he
thought with mild guilt before smiling at his
wife, Of course! You didnt actually think Id
forgotten, did you? I just wanted to surprise my
darling wife.
Taking flowers from a graveyard will

bring bad luck.
It has been said that picking a flower from a
grave and then throwing it away is thought to
bring bad luck, as the place where the flower
falls will be haunted. It has also been said that
you shouldnt take flowers off a grave or you
might soon find yourself in one. In general,
there are strong superstitions about taking
flowers from graveyards being bad luck.
The origins of this proverbial warning can
be traced as far back as ancient Greece in
the story of Hades, god of the dead, abducting Persephone as she gathered violets. This
story holds a much deeper warning to those
who know what to look for: the warning of
the Thanatanthe (thah-nah-TAHN-thay) or
Blossom of Death.
Thanatanthe
Background: One apocryphal story says
that the Thanatanthe is the remnants
of a pharaohs curse upon grave robbers:
Take from the dead and become one of
them. This unknown Pharaoh was said to
be so angered by the idea that someone
might deny him anything in the afterlife
by stealing his possessions that he spent
years researching curses and maledictions
to ensure his tombs safety. He beseeched
the gods for the power to see his will
through. The gods and goddesses looked
down upon this Pharaoh and decided to
answer his prayer.
Upon his deathbed, this pharaoh spoke his
curse to all grave robbers who would dare to
take from the dead. Clutching a bouquet of
lotus flowers brought for his pleasure, the pharaoh died with his curse on his lips. When his
tomb was robbed, the pharaoh was allowed to
his revenge.
In the disguise of a mourners bouquet of
flowers, the pharaoh traveled with the thieves
to their den. When the thieves went to sleep,
the pharaoh manifested in the form of a deadly
coil of poisoned smoke. It wound its fragrant
way through the hideout, enticing its sleeping victims to breathe deeply of its heady
scent and then smothered them while they
slumbered.
The curse was not without its drawbacks,
however, and the pharaohs spirit found itself
compelled to seek the unwary robbers of more
and more graves, even those in far-off countries. Over the centuries, the spirit has lost all
memory of its origin and now merely carries out
its compulsion to punish those who would steal
from the dead.
smell the flowers but dont take one
49
Description: When the Thanatanthe can be

seen, it looks like a tentacle of yellowish smoke
rising from the stolen blooms. It smells like
whatever flower is has been born from. Snaking
out from the flowers, it grows ever longer until it
reaches its intended victim. Once separated from
the bouquet, the coil of smoke reaches a length of
about five feet.
Storytelling Hints: The Thanatanthe is a monster
without conscious thought. It is the embodiment of
a dying mans paranoia and rage. It is a vicious guard
dog that, once freed, will not stop until it perceives its
job is complete. That job is to kill the thief who stole
from the grave and all his companions and abettors.
In this case, if a boy brings his sister flowers from a
grave, the Thanatanthe will murder the boy, his sister,
his parents and even his dog.
The Thanatanthe will remain for as long as the
thief and those he lives with are still alive or until
the stolen flowers are destroyed or tossed out of the
house. Being fairly quick to act, the Thanatanthe
rarely waits long enough for the stolen gravestone
flowers to wilt and die.
Though the monsters original manifestation originates in the bouquet of flowers, it will quickly separate
itself and seek the thief. The Thanatanthe tends to
act at night and prefers to murder its victims in their
sleep. However it will attack victims who are awake
as well. The Thanatanthe is a powerful ghost but
not a particularly sentient one (World of Darkness
Rulebook, pp. 208-216). However, it does have one
crucial weakness if the stolen bouquet of flowers is
destroyed, the Thanatanthe is banished, not to return
unless someone steals another bouquet of flowers from
a gravestone.
Willpower: 5
Initiative: 10
Defense: 6
Speed: 11
Size: 4
Corpus: 8
Essence: 15
Numina: Choke
Notes: If the stolen bouquet of flowers is destroyed, the Thanatanthe is banished. nished.
Special power: Choke.
50

If the character is a creature that does not need to breathe, it is immune to the Thanatanthe.
Once it attacks and the character does not breathe, it will sense them as dead and leave them.
Special Powers
Choke (Power + Finesse versus Stamina +
Athletics): This ability is part physical and
part supernatural. It is the ability to choke
and suffocate a targeted victim. It does this
through forcing itself into the victims nose
and mouth, using its smoke-like body to block
all air passages.
Story Idea:
The Mercy House
The Mercy House is a hospice run by Mary
Walker, a retired nurse. Walker is a kind soul
who runs the house with a firm but gentle hand.
She listens to her patients fear, anger and hope
with attention and compassion, even understanding when they lash out at her.
When it comes to the patients visitors,

Nurse Walker does what she can to make them
comfortable. She allows them to stay when she
knows they are here to spend quality time with
a parent, a child, or a loved one.
Most patients at the Mercy House die peacefully
in their sleep, which is a blessing for those who
have been in so much painphysical and emotional. Once the dead have passed on, they are
no longer in pain and those they left behind can
begin the long road of grieving and recovery.
Janet McGuires mother, Ruth, is currently the
only patient at the Mercy House. Ruth is seventyone years old and dying of cancer. Most days, she
sleeps. Some days, the persistent pain keeps her
awake. Janet has flown in to be with her mother
in these last weeks. Mother and daughter have
finally said what they needed to say to other. They
both know that the end is coming soon.
thanatanthe-story idea the mercy house
51
In the Dead of Night

MENTAL
PHYSICAL
Overview
You are a friend of Janets, and shes asked
to not be alone in this time of grief. She will
even accept the company of strangers if they
are sympathetic and supportive. Janet has finally made peace with her mother after a long
estrangement over misunderstandings and petty
disagreements. The reunion and the good-bye
with her mother have taken its toll on Janet
and she isnt sure she can handle her mothers
death alone.
Nancy Walker, usually the epitome of kindness, seems to have grown uncomfortable with
the number of people in the house. After delivering a bouquet of flowers to Ruths room,
Walker has asked that you all leave Ruth
in peace for the evening. She is firm in this
order and despite Janets protests will accept
nothing less.
Janet, having just regained her mother only to
lose her again, is in no mood to obey the nurse.
She convinces you all to stay with her.
Description
It is 11:55pm and all seems well until Nurse
Walker appears in the doorway. She is surprised
to see you as she is unaccustomed to being
disobeyed. I thought I told you to leave! She
looks over her shoulder in a worried gesture
towards Ruths room. You need to go. Its not
safe for you here. Leave.
Before you can make sense of her strange
commands and nervous demeanor, an alarm goes off
down the hall. Something is wrong with Ruth. Her
heart or breathing has stopped. Janet, in a sudden
panic, rushes past the nurse.
Nurse Walker follows on Janets heels and they both
stop in the doorway to Ruths room. Ruth is peaceful,
smiling even but definitely dead. Everyone in the
doorway can see the coil of yellowish smoke pouring
out of Ruths nose and mouth.
52
SOCIAL
It was her time, the nurse says, with a

strange regretful tone. She suddenly shoves Janet
behind her, opening her arms wide to the barely
seen creature. Get out! she shouts. Get
out while you can! Nurse Walker turns her
attention back towards the coil of smoke drifting
toward her. Her fear is palpable as she faces the
oncoming miasma.
Storyteller Goals
Show that sometimes running from the monster is the best idea, and the characters should
grab the innocents and go. If the characters stay
and fight despite the nurses plea to leave, Janet
will be killed, the nurse will be killed (probably)
and, until someone destroys the bouquet of flowers (Durability 0, Size 1, Structure 1) or all of
the characters flee the house, all the characters
will be killed, one by one.
Character Goals
Choose whether or not to run and whether
or not to save anyone. If they stay despite
the nurses plea, their goal is to survive long
enough to figure out that the bouquet of flowers is the key and destroy it. After the running
(or fighting), if the nurse survives, the characters need to decide what to do about her and
her supernatural method of mercy killing
her patients.
Actions
Gasping for Breath
Dice Pool: Power + Finesse (dice pool 7) versus the intended victims Stamina + Athletics
More information on the Thanatanthes
Choke power can be found on p. 51.
Hindrances: None.
Help (victim): Holding breath (+2), Strong
Lungs Merit.
Roll Results
dramatic failure, not only does the Thanatanthe
not get a hold on its intended victim to choke
but it loses sight of the target altogether and will
spend the next action seeking out a new victim.
If the player of the victim rolls a dramatic failure,
she is at -1 to any future rolls to resist for the
rest of the scene.
Failure: The Thanatanthe does not choke its
intended victim. The victim can still breathe.
Success: The Thanatanthe begins to choke
its victim, doing lethal damage.
an exceptional success, the Thanatanthe not
only gets a hold on its intended victim to choke
her, the victim is at -1 to any future Stamina +
Athletics rolls to resist for the rest of the scene.
If the player of the victim rolls an exceptional
success, the Thanatanthe loses sight of the target and will spend the next action seeking out
a new victim.
Consequences
If the characters run and take the nurse with
them, only Ruth dies. The characters may then
question Walker about the monster and how it
works. She will explain what she knows about
the Thanatanthe and how she used it to painlessly kill her hospice patients when they were
ready to die.
If the characters run, leaving the nurse behind,
she and Ruth both die. (Though shes brought
the creature to her house, she doesnt know how
to stop it.) The police will find that Ruth appears
to have died in her sleep and Walker appears
to have had a heart attack. The characters are
safe but they know nothing of the Thanatanthe,
what Nurse Walker had been doing or why.
If the characters stand and fight, the monster
will kill everyone in the house. If they manage to
destroy the flowers after the monster has killed
Walker, Janet, or any of the player characters,
the remaining characters will be caught up in a
police investigation of the suspicious deaths.
in the dead of night
53
scene:
mental
I See You. Do You See Me?
physical
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
No occult knowledge (-1).
Poor or hindered eyesight (+1).

Blind characters are immune
to the Mirarees power.
The victim must be beguiled
before it can be consumed.
Miraree scene.
Exceptional eyesight (-1).

A beguiled victim will
take no physical actions,
and has a Defense of 0
(making it easier for others
to attack, grapple or
otherwise move her).
sts
The Miraree will attack is to beguile and consume everyone it possibly can.
pcs
Defeat the Miraree without anyone (especially Sharon) being consumed.
scene:
mental
54
13
Its Alive!
18
physical
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
The Doliochthon is
being fired on (-1).
The Doliochthon is
in motion (+1).
Doliochthon scene.
Thermal scanner, motion sensor,

or other high-tech surveillance
gear allows the target
to dodge more accurately.
The creatures Camouflage
power naturally makes it
harder to locate it (-1).
It does not specifically

hide its tracks (+1).
sts
Attack and feed from the group. Escape with at least Gunny as a meal for later.
pcs
Survive the initial attack by the Doliochthon.

Get the archaeologist to the pyramid and back out again.
scene:
mental
On the Rooftop
23
physical
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
The Dreamer is visible

and horrible (-1);
None
Dreamer scene.
If the Dreamer is
only frightened away
but not killed, it will spend
the next two days
redoubling its efforts
to get Lon killed.
bemuse/terrify any
targets that arent
its chosen victim (-1).
sts
The Dreamer will bemuse and terrify Lon until he is dead.
pcs
Protect Lon from the Dreamer and from going over the rooftop.
scene:
mental
Unlucky Little Boys
physical
28
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
The Goblin Roach

stingers cannot pierce
Armor 3 or above.
If the Goblin Roach king
is killed, the attack
stops immediately.
None
Goblin Roach scene.
sts
The Goblin Roaches want the challengers (the boys)

and the interlopers (the characters) off their territory at all costs.
pcs
Save the children from their own folly.
55
scene:
mental
Persuading Autumne
physical
33
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
Not born in October (-1).

If the opal stone is broken,
Autumne will be
temporarily banished.
Born in October (+2).
Autumne scene.
Combat rolls versus Julie

(as the edict breaker; +1)
Autumne is focused on Julie

(-1 to Defense).
sts
Autumne will try to gain a sincere apology from Julie

(or someone speaking for her) or kill her with great malice.
pcs
Save Julie from Autumne by providing him with the sincere apology he wants
or by temporarily banishing him.
scene:
mental
56
Nothing Floats Down Here
physical
38
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
Glitra is still (-1).

The Glitra is unaffected
by powers that attack
the mind, intellect or
emotions or any power
that needs eye contact.
Glitra is in motion (+1).
Glitra scene.
For each target

beyond the first (-1).
sts
Tell a creepy story.
pcs
Find out what happened to the missing sewer workers.

Either escape from or kill the Glitra. Reap the rewards of surviving with the information.
scene:
mental
An Unholy Light
43
physical
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
Target is within arms reach,

and can use Defense.
A lot of objects in
the backyard are flammable.
Ash-burn scene.
sts
Force the characters to choose revealing themselves in order to protect their friends.
Kill as many Storyteller characters as possible and damage as much property as possible.
pcs
Choose whether or not to out themselves.

If yes, defeat or kill the Ash-burn. Deal with the fallout of either path of action.
scene:
mental
Hostile Natives
47
physical
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
No Occult knowledge (-1).

Immune to any
common household items
used as weapons.
Encyclopedic Knowledge (+1).
Domos scene.
sts
Present a story where talking is the best option.
pcs
Help the Harpers and quell the Domos by talk or by combat.
57
scene:
mental
In the Dead of Night
physical
52
social
hinDRances
help
otheR
None
Holding Breath (+2),

Strong Lungs Merit
Thanatanthe scene.
If the character is a
creature that does not
need to breathe, its immune
to the Thanatanthe.
58
sts
Prove that sometimes it is best to just run away from the monster.
pcs
Run away from the monster and learn more about it and the nurse. Deal with the nurse.
Fight the monster and try to survive. Deal with the nurse if she survives.
Credits
Written by: Chuck Wendig

Additional Material by: People Who Should Fucking Know Better
World of Darkness created by Mark ReinHagen.
Developer: Eddy Web
Editor: Someone Who Needed a Paycheck, But Still Has Self-Respect
Art Director, Book Design, Interior Art, Cover Art: A Bunch
of Drunken Artists Who Knocked This Out Over a Case of Beer
For Use with

the World of
Darkness Rulebook
White Wolf and the World of Darkness are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved.
This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are iction
PRINTED IN YOUR MIND, YOU FILTHY BASTARD.
Credits
How to Be
Fucking Awesome
Chuck Wendig
Preface
Preface
I begged to do this. (Editors Note: He really did. See
the attached picture.) I was born to write this preface.
Well, that may not be true. I was probably born for
other things, but thanks to adopting the path of a Slacking Game Writer, the hopes and dreams of my parents
were dashed on the rocks of the River Disappointment.
I may not have been the West Point grad-turnedaerospace engineer and astronaut I set out to be, but
I became so much more.
I became a bad-ass hero Gangrel vampire, twin
katanas strapped across my black pleather-clad back,
twin Colt revolvers (silver bullets loaded, of course)
at my hips, striking fear in my enemies and lust in
the fishnet-wearing would-be huntress who fell for
my brooding charms.
Pardon my departure from my usual writing style,
but this must be said. Fuck your pussy, emo, angsting, inner-demon wrestling child of the night. Your
Roman-era politicians, your secret-society schemers,
your social magistrates theyre all a bunch of goddamned asshats!
I remember when vampires were mother-fucking
superheroes of the shadows. OK, most of them were of
the 90s, kill-everything anti-hero types, carrying more
hardware and explosives than the typical Marine Expeditionary Force. Body counts were points scored, local
governments were the bitches of the HMVIC (the
Head Mother-Fucking Vampire In Charge, AKA the
Prince, AKA the one who ate your daddy and told you
to sit and watch), and breaking the Masquerade only
happened if you actually left any witnesses alive.
I wasnt one of those guys. Most of my friends were,
but I went that other way. I would be Nick Knight,
working the night streets and saving humans from the
monsters that hunted them. But Id be far, far badder
Neo and Blade double-teamed Buffy, mingled their
sperm, and she popped out the bullet-time martial arts
killing machine that was my heroic fang boy.
I think he lasted, like, three sessions before the
other leeches beat him down like a Manilow fan
at a Poison concert. Something about the HMVIC
Dudes of Legend
not enjoying having his top enforcers cut down

at a social function celebrating vampire uberness,
or something.
So my next masterpiece? Skald-warrior Brujah,
bitches! Leather jacket, curb-stomping boots, spiked
shoulder pads and bracers, a giant silvered great axe
on his back and dual shotguns strapped to his thighs.
He spouted poetry as he chopped werewolf heads off,
told Toreadors they were pussy-little poseurs while he
drug their women onto the dance floor, and imagined

the HMVIC wet his coffin every night in fear of the
day Gunther Thorsbrood would claim his throne.
Seriously, what are you artsy twats doing to this
game? What happened to the black, shiny clothes, the
incessant machine gun firing, the super-speed battles
atop subway trains? Where are the hot chicks, thrusting their boobs out along with their lower lips, taunting and teasing you into ultimate sin? The angst was
just supposed to be an excuse for the hot goth fashions;

we all reveled in the power and the violence, the sex
without consequences, and a life immortal where little
humans danced to our tunes.
Put all the other books away, boys and girls. This
is all you really need. Discover what it REALLY means
to be a right and proper bloodsucker.
Oh, and yeah, dont forget your Super Soaker full
of holy water. Man, I LOVED that trick!
Sean Patrick Fannon, author, The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamers Bible and Shaintar: Legends Unleashed,
gamer with a lot of repressed... something.
Dudes
of
Legend:
Dudes of Legend:
How
to
Be
How to Be
Fucking Awesome
FUCKING AWESOME
Even though I was
even though i was thetheatrically trained,
atrically trained, learning
learning to develop a
to develop a character
character was an awewas an awesome experisome experience.
ence.
- Corin Nemec,
corin nemec, AkA

AKA
Parker
Parker
P a rLewis
k e r fom
Le
wis
Lewis
can't
Lose
from Parker Lewis
Cann't Lose
Dudes of Legend
No, no, I get it. You think were joking.

I hear you: Meh-ha-hee-ha, oh, trenchcoats and strippers, its an
April Fools Day thing from those wacky White Wolf guys again. Theyre
probably drunk on mezcal, or high on the dust ground from the bones of
a long-lost subterranean humanoid race.
Drunk? Yes. High on the bone dust of a fallen hobbit species? Duh.
But were not fucking around. You put that out of your head. You
put it out of your head, or well kick it out. With boots. With fat, clunky
steel-toe construction boots.
Yeah, keep on giggling.
See, you think whatever you want, but strippers? Awesome. Lesbian
strippers? Double-awesome. Lesbian strippers whipping off their trenchcoats only to reveal a katana tucked delicately in a garter or g-string?
That is a face full of awesome. Your face will be dripping with awesome.
The sauce of awesome will give you a nasal enema.
Oh, dont you turn your nose down at me. Or is it, look down your
nose and turn up your nose? It has to be, right? It cant be look up your
nose, because thats disgusting. Especially after that whole nasal enema
thing. Wait. Where were we? Whats happening? Why am I wearing this
rabbit costume with the ass cut out?
All right. Shake it off. Shake it off. Get back in the game. Refocus.
Laser precision. Forget about what Mommy said. Forget her. You dont
need her anymore.
Ah. Yes. Thats right. Here we go.
Dont you condescend to me, man. Youre trapped in your little uppity world where vampires are merely conveyances for personal horror,
where Frankensteins are just lumbering vehicles for existential dread.
Youre locked in a little box of morality and meaning, and somewhere
along the way you forgot how to have fun. Thats right. Im talking to you,
emo-boy. With your Flock of Seagulls haircut and your poofy shirt. Why
so serious? Youve got to get shut of that shit, son. Or lady. Or ladyboy.
Or whatever gender conglomeration you happen to be. Were screaming
it so the cheap seats can hear. Were delivering a gospelgospel means
good news, rememberof raw unbridled bad-ass motherfucking awesome to your soul.
Were going to teach you how to have fun again.
Gone with the gloomy-gus mope-mask, people.
Its time to rock out with your cock out.
Or, for the ladies, time to jam out with your clam out.
Or, for the gender ambiguous, its time to... drop curtain... on your... uhh,
uncertain? Its time to do the serious funk out with your, ummm, mysterious
junk out? Hrm. Im just not feeling that one. I tried. I really tried.
Shut up.
Seriously, Were Serious. Or HalfSerious. Or Something.

Were well aware that this product is ridiculous.
The idea is itself a kind of joke, yes, but believe me
were actually trying to give you some material you
can use. Kind of. Sure, its fairly rules-light, but you
might actually want to plug-and-play this stuff into
one of your World of Darkness games. Why? Why in
Gods Unpronounceable Nomenclature would you
dare to invoke such madness in your story? Isnt this
stuff just for a laugh?
Two reasons you might want to use this product
in a serious way.
One: Parody can work at the game table. Listen,
half the time a game session with friends devolves into
a whirlwind of jokes and side-stories. With the horror bent of the World of Darkness, thats not exactly
usefulso, you can use these rules to take some time
off from the uber-seriousness of your current game
and play a session using these system hacks. Itll maybe
help get the shits-and-giggles out. Parody and satire
have a place at the game table in limited quantityor,
if everybody loves it, in unlimited quantity. Fun is fun,
and if this gives you that, run with it.
Two: One or two of these rules might actually be
useful. Sure, each character hack is loaded with satirical
pretense, but the rules themselves might be something
you can grab and use. Looking forward to the upcoming
release, World of Darkness: Mirrors, this isnt entirely
inappropriate. That book is all about dissecting both
system and setting to build the type of game you want
to play. This is that, just in a more... over-the-top manner. And maybe over-the-top is what you want. You
want to ape crazy ideas and monstrous stereotypes for
a truly batshit game experience? Theres nothing wrong
with that. The rules here may help you to achieve that
over-the-top experience at your game table.
All that being said? Yes, were being offensive. Yes,
were being ludicrous. No, were not seriously trying
to insult you or waste your time. Make you laugh, yes.
Offer you a gonzo World of Darkness game, sure. Beg
you to write us letters about how offended you are?
Mmm. No.
Features: How
This Shit Works
Okay, heres how this nonsense works. These
are full-on character-based system hacks. They dont
have dots. Theyre not Merits. They dont require
namby-pamby experience point costs, because experience points require counting and math and other
Im-too-tired-and-drunk-on-the-misery-of-othersand-also-Southern-Comfort-to-care issues. Plus, with
experience points, you have to have a pencil with an
eraser, and I dont have one of those. Really, erasers
are kind of bullshit anyway. They always tear a hole
in the paper, and then you look like some kind of
hobo at the game table. Nobody wants to look like a
hobo. I mean, maybe you want to look like a hobo, but
thats just weird. Dont even get me started on pens
with erasers. Does that shit ever work? I dont think
so. I think theyre just designed to torment me. So, no
experience point costs, and no pencils with erasers.
Or pens with erasers. Youre just going to have to suck
it up, Sweet Molly.
Anyway. You have a couple-few ways of instituting
these particular feature hacks:
The Storyteller allows each player to select a
predetermined number of hacks for those players
characters. We suggest between one and three. But
really, we just suggest three. Why? Ill tell you why.
Because you get to mix-and-match. Its like a recipe.
A recipe for total mega-crazy marvelousness, like a
goddamn pterodactyl riding a jet ski. Actually, since
were all post-modern and whatever, I guess the word
is mashup. You can mashup a handful of character
hacks for your character, combining them in some kind
of madhouse alchemy: I will play a homoerotic glitter
werewolf who happens to have robot parts. Done and
done. That story writes itself. Or plays itself. Or plays
with itself. One of those.
The Storyteller says the same thing as above,
except this time, he snatches choice from the players like a coked-up seagull. What he does instead is
write a bunch of the character hacks on little slips of
paper, stick them in a cup (not an athletic protector
cup, but the kind you drink out ofunless you drink
out of athletic protectors, then thats your business,
buddy) and let everybody pick one to three for their
characters. That way, its totally randomized. And
secret awesomeness will occur secretly.
The Storyteller institutes a series of character
hacks not just for the player characters, but for all
characters of a given monster-type. All Frankensteins
are hom oerotic, he might state. He might further
add stipulations connected to other monster types,
too: Werewolves are fishmalks, even though that
only makes a little bit of sense, and every mage can
dodge bullets. And finally, the Storyteller might add,
Whoever keeps replacing my 10-sided dice with rabbit turds will find their character murdered and buried
in a flower bed. Im serious about this. You guys dont
respect me.
The Storyteller institutes a series of character
hacks for every character in the game, including all
Storyteller characters. This is funny, but stupid as shit.
Sure, its not a bad idea that Herr Doktor Dracula the
7
Features-How This Shit Works
Prince of Schenectady is a katana-wielding Priapic

bad-ass, but does that really need to be true of Vasily,
the heavily chest-haired cab driver, or Jenny, the girl
who fills your prescriptions at the pharmacy counter?
Sure, there exists a delightful image when everybodys
running around with samurai swords and throbbing
erections, but remember: when everybody is special,
nobody is special.
Hey, Here's the

Actual Hacks
rules on how to ride a grizzly bear? No. No, they did

not. Thats what you get in this product. Were taking
it to a whole other level, and as such, you need Very
Special Rules. So shut up about it already.
The skill test to ride a beast is Dexterity + Animal
Ken + the Handling rating of the critter in question.
The animal doesnt have Durability, because thats
just dumb. The beast does have an Armor rating,
however. Same basic idea applies. No Structure, but
Health instead. Duh.
We have three beasties for you today, but youre
welcome to come up with more. You do what you want.
Its your life. (Unless I steal it to fuel my undead power
web. Dont make me.)
Bare Thy Chest to Conquer All
Grizzly Bear
A bared chest equals awesome power. Its like

that werewolf dude from that movie, played by... Tyler
Labine or Turbine Loudermilk or whatever his name
is (what am I, a 12-year-old girl?).
A bared chest offers the character two benefits:
first, the character gains +1 Armor, and second, the
character gains +3 to all Persuasion rolls. Not just for
acts of seduction, either. If the character wants to buy
a used car or convince the old lady next door to sweep
his walkway, a bared chest goes a long way.
And yes, this works for ladies as it does lads. A
pair of swinging mammaries will aid in Persuasion, and
further can equally work to take the impact of bullets
or camping hatchets. I read that in Popular Science.
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 2, Resolve 5,

Strength 5, Dexterity 2, Stamina 5, Presence 3, Manipulation 1, Composure 3
Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl (Maul) 3, Survival 3
Willpower: 8
Initiative: 5
Defense: 2
Size: 7
Health: 12
Armor: 2
Acceleration: 5
Safe Speed: 25 (about 17 MPH)
Maximum Speed: 50 (about 35 MPH)
Handling: 1
Attacks: Claws, 3(L); Chompy Bite, 2(L)
The Beast-Rider Cometh
Pterodactyl
You know what the World of Darkness needs?

More creatures you can ride. Hey, the kids get all
excited about that in that game where you play orcs
and elves of the night and whateverOh, Ive got my
new mount, which frankly sounds like youre hoping
to mate with a pegasus or something. And frankly,
who wouldnt? If I were toright nowmate with
a pegasus, the resultant child would be half-human,
half-horse, and have wings. That to me smells like
flying centaur baby. And that, my friends, is the
smell of money. Carnies around the world would be
shitting their diapers trying to get a hold of my little
flying centaur baby. That little freakshow would be a
bottomless bucket of cash. Plus, circus folk also cook
meth. Its true. I read it on Wikipedia. Who doesnt
love meth?
Since it seems like I wont be breeding with a
pegasus anytime soon, the next best thing is to have a
creature you can ride through the World of Darkness.
To make this work, you need information that
marries the animal rules (p. 202, World of Darkness
Rulebook) with the vehicle rules (p. 141, World of
Darkness Rulebook). I know, youre saying that somewhere, someone came up with rules for how to ride a
horse. I dont give a shit. Did anybody come up with
Dudes of Legend

Skills: Athletics (Flight) 3, Brawl 2, Stealth 1,
Survival 2
Willpower: 4
Initiative: 7
Defense: 4
Size: 6
Health: 9
Armor: 3
Acceleration: 15
Safe Speed: 44 (30 MPH)
Maximum Speed: 75 (50 MPH)
Handling: 2
Attacks: Claws, 1(L); Shriek Attack, 2(L)
Unicorn

Skills: Athletics (Gallop) 3, Brawl (Hornstab) 5,
Empathy (Marriage counseling) 5, Medicine (Unicorn
spit) 2, Persuasion (Seduction) 4, Socialize (Party
games) 3, Streetwise (Gang signs) 2
Willpower: 8
Initiative: 10
Defense: 5
Size: 7
Health: 10
Armor: 2
Acceleration: 10
Safe Speed: 75 (50 MPH)
Maximum Speed: 103 (70 MPH)
Handling: 5
Attacks: Hornstab, 2(L)
Bullets Aint Got Nothing On You
You know what cool characters do? They dodge

bullets. They duck them. They sidestep them. They
lean back as the bullet parts their goatee. Bullets
go in one direction. Step out of that one direction
and whama slick move, and no inconvenient
lung perforations.
Players whose characters possess this graceful gift
can dodge bullets by making a reflexive Dexterity +
Athletics roll. Successes on this roll subtract from
the successes gained on the attack roll by the guntoting foe. If the successes on the bullets can suck my
balls roll match or exceed the I want to shoot you
in your balls roll, then the character has successfully
dodged the bullet. If those successes are lesser, then
at least the attack rolls damage has been minimized,
so thats something about which you can write home
to Mommy.
Fearful Priapism
You hear those dick pill ads, and theyre all like,
If you have an erection lasting for more than four
hours, consult a doctor. It should read: If you have
an erection lasting for more than four hours, consult
a bunch of sexy ladies and high-five your penis!
You ever read mythology? Look back at those old
gods and youll see em sporting dangerous, unholy
wood. Their cocks are basically baseball bats studded
with thorns and snaked with vines and tipped with
antlersits erectile divinity. We could all only aspire
to have that in real life.
Well, in the World of Darkness, you can. You can
be a werewolf with a giant mythic erection. You can
be a vampire with a majestic pale pillar of undead
man-meat. You can be a Promethean with a hundred
turgid wangs stitched together to create an uber-wang
crackling with nascent electricity.
Your tumescence is legendary.
Your newly deified penis offers a few cool benefits.
First, you can use it as a weapon. It counts as a
2(B) weapon. It gains the Knockdown feature (p. 168,
World of Darkness Rulebook).
Second, the penis can hold two extra points of
Willpower, thus increasing your Willpower pool by
two dots.
Third, roll a d10 at the time you create the character or gain this benefit. The number rolled equals
the number of worshippers (cock acolytes or cockolytes for short) that venerate your rigid man-spear.
These worshippers count as one-dot Retainers (Merit
found on p. 116 of the World of Darkness Rulebook).
If theyre killed, well, too fucking bad. Shit happens.
Better perform some miracles with that thing if you
want new followers, you dig?
Now, let me ask the question you want to ask me:
isnt this sexist? Cant a ladys parts be sacred, too?
Yes, absolutely. But thats a whole different bonus,
isnt it? A vagina isnt a penis. Thats basic anatomy.
What youre looking for is Sacred Vagina. Thats found
later in this product (p. 14).
Fuck Falling
You know whats easily as cool as some chick who
can dodge bullets? Some chick who jumps off like, a
super-tall building and lands on a car or some pavement or an old lady and is totally unharmed.
Thats some Catwoman shit, thats what that is.
Its all likewhoosh, flutter, fwip-fwip-fwip
and the hair is crazy and the clothes are rippling and
thenwhambo! Car dented in! Pavement cracked!
Old lady explodes like a balloon filled with viscera!
This ones easy, system-wise: the character takes
no damage from falling. Ever. Though, to land all
cool-like, the character must succeed on a Dexterity + Expression roll with a penalty of -1 die per 100
feet fallen (maximum -5 penalty). Why Expression?
Because landing on an old lady in a really cool way is
poetry, man. Poetry.
Glitter Is for
Vampires and Strippers
This ones pretty easy. You glimmer and shimmer,

like youre covered in glitter. Its pretty awesome. It
gives you +3 to all Socialize rolls, because who doesnt
want to talk to some dude or chick whose flesh twinkles
with cosmic glitter?
If your character is a vampire, you gain doubleextra-awesomeness in that you also get to walk around
in the sunlight. When you do, though, youre fey and
frail, suffering a -3 to all Physical dice pools. Further,
all Physical-based dice rolls lose the 10-Again quality.
Everyone also thinks youre a little gay.
Herr Doktor Mister Tight Pants

You know why ancient vampires and superheroes
wear tight leather pants? Because the tightness focuses
their internal awesomeness and squeezes it up into
the upper torso and head where it can be utilized by
heart and mind. Thats a true fact. Thats science.
They studied that shit in a bunker somewhere with a
the actual hacks
Homoeroticism
Equals Secret Power
bunch of white rats in tiny pairs of dark leather pants.

I know. I was there. It was the 60s. It was free love.
It was lots of LSD.
So, mock those in leather pants all youd like,
but youre poking a sleeping bear with that one. You
never know when the be-leathered individual will
harness his inner chi and punt your head off your
neck and into a third story window somewhere.
In game system terms, if your character has
this feature, then once per game session he can
take five points of bashing damage, two points of
lethal, or one point of aggravated damage. Doing
so grants him the following extra dice to spend
on actions:
Gaining five bashing earns the character three
extra dice that can be added to rolls during this
game session.
Gaining two points of lethal damage earns the
character five extra dice that can be added to rolls
during this game session.
Gaining one point of aggravated damage earns
the character seven extra dice that can be added to
rolls during this game session.
These dice dont need to be spent on a single roll.
This feature has a downside, though: any character bearing this feature, male or female, may
never have children. If the character already has
children before harnessing the powerful focus of
the tight pants, then those children do not merely
die but wink out of existence. Poof. Blink. Gone.
They probably go to some weird Childrens Dimension where all the spurned adolescents gather in a
nebulous void, plotting their revenge against the
material world of asshole adulthood. You can have
that story seed for free. That ones on me. You only
have to come clean the dog vomit up out of my
carpet. See you this afternoon. Wear gloves. The
dog ikes to eat jizz tissues.
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Dudes of Legend
Once in a blue moon, you might pick up a book for

an, erm, generic vampire-based roleplaying game and
you might see, ehhhh, a cover depicting some vampire
ladies getting down with other vampire ladies. You
might want to condemn the company that does so.
Thats your right. Exceptexcept!youd be a fool to
do so, because the truth is that said anonymous game
company (that might be called something like El Lupo
Blanco) is onto a very real, very truthful truth.
Fact: Homoeroticism is magic.
Why do you think you get so many lipstick lesbian vampires locking lips and nuzzling each other
for blood? Why do you think the Greeks lauded the
mystical bond between two sexy dudes greased up with
olive oil? Did the Sumerians hold homosexuality to
be sacred? Yes. Did the Mayans? Sure. Did the ancient
Moon People in their Distant Lunar Arcologies? You
bet your crap-can. Why do you think that homosexuality is often repressed by mainstream religion? Because
they dont want anybody engaging in same-sex relationships to have all that delicious magic.
This is totally true. You can find it on the Internet.
Of course, you can also find videos on the Internet
where people eat their own poo, so you kind of have
to weigh the positives and negatives. But still. Still!
Its magic.
As such, characters in the World of Darkness who
engage in same-sex pairingswhether as a serious
relationship or as a college experimentgain access to magic. That character can access one ghost- or
spirit-based Numen (found in the World of Darkness
Rulebook starting on page... do I really have to look
this up? Yes? Goddamnit. Starting on pagehold on,
I almost found itpage 210). You arent restricted to
the Numina in that book, and youll find such powers
scattered across... well, a lot of other books. No, I wont
list them here. Use the Internet to look it up. Right
after youre done with all those poo-eater videos.
Since most characters do not possess Essence or a
Power + Finesse dice pool, the player should instead
use the characters Willpower to fuel the Numen, and
a Strength + Wits roll to perform the ability.
Why? Because I said so. Im not drunk. Youre
drunk! Shut up.
John Woo Two-Gun Mojo
This ones super-easy. You know how in John Woo

movies, everybodys jumping around like monkeys with
firecrackers up their asses, firing from two guns like it
aint no thing but a chicken wing? This is that.
A character with this feature needs no Merit to fire
two guns at the same time. He can take two separate
attacks in a given turnone for each firearmwithout
an issue. Further, he can run or jump reflexively
(Athletics roll probably required, what do I know?)

without concern.
Finally, incoming firearm attacks suffer a -1 penalty due to all the goddamn white doves flying around.
Its hard to get a bead on your character with all those
feathers flying.
Mad Ninja Skillz
Youre a ninja.
How cool is that?
I mean, nobodys actually a ninja anymore. Its a
dumb idea. The guy who thinks hes a ninja is probably actually a dude who just throws shuriken at the
mail carrier from his attic window. He probably hunts
people with a kitchen knife (his katana) and a Snuggie
spraypainted black (his ninja outfit).
But fuck it, this is the World of Darkness. Its a
game. You can be whatever you want to be. So that
means its time to be a ninja, because being a ninja in
a fictional world beats all other options. In the face.
With a nail-studded toilet seat.
Now, actual ninjas had all sorts of... historical
gobbledygook to consider, but that would require reading and effort and Im just not down with that level of
investment. Theyre not even paying me for this job.
Any payment I get will have to be taken out of Eddy
Webbs hide. With a lemon zester.
So, instead of focusing on lengthy factual and
accurate historical portrayals, lets just get straight to
the juicy cuts of meat: the sweet, sweet fictions.
If you choose to have Mad Ninja Skillz, you can
have one of the following super-slick shinobi powers
(or make up your own, you lazy-ass bastard!):
Disappear in Shadow: Anytime theres a shadow
as big as a person (which includes the very big shadow
often known as night time), you can hide in it. You
can literally become a two-dimensional flattened version of yourself. This costs one Willpower. If another
character makes a concerted effort to spot you, that
character must succeed on a Wits + Investigation roll,
and that roll suffers a penalty equal to the ninja characters Dexterity dots. The ninja can jump out and be
all Boo! Now I stab your rectum!which in game
terms means he might be able to surprise the victim.
Knife Skillz: Any bladed weapon you hold is
deadly in your hands. Anybody battling you is down
-3 Defense because youre just too super-fast for words.
Shing-shing! Slicey-slice! One downside to this: you
cant use guns. Any attempt to use a gun defaults that
attack roll to a chance die. Why? Ninjas dont use guns,
dumbass. If they did, they wouldnt be ninjas. You can
find that on p. 74 of the World of Ninjas Rulebook.
Pain Is an Illusion Like Those Magic Eye Paintings of Unicorns: The ninja is not affected by wound
penalties when he spends a Willpower point. Hes not
numb to it; he is simply unfazed, because ninjas are rad
as shit. The effect of painlessness lasts for one hour.
They call this The Shinobi Hour.
Walk on Water: Its that easy. You can walk on

water. And not just when it freezes, either. Youre just
like Jesus (except with a darker robe). You can run,
tip-toe, walk, whatever, right across the surface of said
fluid. Why? Because youre a ninja. Durr.
Wire Fu: I believe ninjas can fly. I believe ninjas
can touch the sky. I think about it every night and
day. Spread ninja wings and fly away. Ahem. Okay,
no, ninjas cant really fly, but they can act like they
have wires attached to them so they can whip through
their air like crazy acrobatic howler monkeys. Check
out the jumping rules on p. 66 (World of Darkness
Ru13b00|<). Now take those jumping distances
and triple them for your character. Always. No cost
necessary. I know, some of the other ones have cost.
And youre all like, Game balance, game balance!
And Im all like, Wipe the sand out of your vaginas.
Game balance is a myth, like yetis and unicorns and
trustworthy politicians. Now pass me the porn and
another jelly jar of that bathtub gin, slave!
Murder Systems
You know what happens when you kill a goblin
in every fantasy game ever? You get experience points
and phat loot.
You know what happens when you stab a taxi
driver in the World of Darkness? You probably get a
derangement and a carload of cops on your ass, and
you probably also pissed off that taxi drivers vampire
master (fact: all taxi drivers are blood-drunk ghouls)
and now everything sucks. Good job. Jerk.
Some of those things we cant erase: the cops,
the vampire master. But, lets make murder more
fun. I mean, hell, were all miscreants and deviants
anyway. We play these games to explore expressions
of violence and to direct our repressed gamer rage!
(Er, thats why I play these games. Dont you? Whats
wrong with you?)
Time to bridge the gap.
Every time you kill somebody in the World of
Darkness, you gain experience.
How much?
Just to give it some glimmer of moral responsibility, lets base it off of the victims Morality (or
equivalent score like Humanity, Harmony, Arete,
Faustability, Pants Size, or Viscosity). Check the
following chart:
Morality Score
8-10
5-7
2-4
0-1
Experience Gained
1
2
3
4
If the character killed is a police officer, then

double the experience gained. No, were not condoning the murder of real, actual cops. Were condoning
the murder of imaginary peace officers in the World
the actual hacks
11
of Darkness! (Lets be honest, youre probably going

to do it in the game anyway.)
Further, feel free to roll on a Phat Loot chart any
time you execute somebody:
Roll Result (d10)
Phat Loot Gained
1 An extra dot in Resources for the remainder
of the day
2 A cat
3 A katana, like one of the ones listed below
4 A double dildo, like the one in the sidebar on
p. 17
5 A Sony Walkman (the original cassette
version, obviously)
6 A flux capacitor
7 A trained monkey (serves as a one-dot Retainer)
8 A Wii
9 A little robot who punches you in the genitals
10 A bag of chocolate coins that, when eaten in
total, give you a Willpower point
The Myth of the Magic Katana Is

No Myth At All
Man, as soon as we put a katana in one of the
books, the cackling chorus rises anew: Katanas are
not that awesome! Katanas are terrible weapons!
They cause blisters! And syphilis! Only a samurai
that suffered a debilitating brain parasite would ever
use a katana!
Eff that ess, hombre. Katanas are fucking cool
as shit. Thats why you see them at flea markets sold
by shady dudes in camo pants. Those guys know
whats up.
So, in an effort to bring katanas more in line with
reality, anybody who chooses a katana as a masterful
weapon can further choose one Awesome Katana Feature to attach to said katana. Choose one. Not two.
Unless your Storyteller says, choose two, at which
point, you choose two, because the Storyteller is in
control of things. Then again, maybe your Storytellers
a real dick, at which point, do what you want. He
cant stop you.
Awesome Katana Features:
Armor Aint Got Shit Against This Blade: You

know what a katana does to armor? It cuts it like a
hot dick through ice cream. Because katanas are king
shit. A katana with this feature gains Armor Piercing
3 (p. 167, World of Darkness Rulebook).
The Blade of Bulletproofness: The weapon has
a Durability of 4. Further, a character wielding such a
katana might get shot at, because people always shoot
at sexy dudes or hot chicks with katanasduh, because
they want that katana. But if the blade has this feature,
then the player can roll a reflexive Defense + Weaponry roll whenever an adversary shoots a firearm at the
character. Success means that the bullet is deflected,
12
Dudes of Legend
but of course those successes must be compared to the

Durability of the blade before damage to the sword is
officially determined. This wont work on attacks made
by shotguns, by the way, at least if those shotguns are
using shotshells rather than slugs. I mean, cmon, the
character cant deflect a dozen tiny little BBs. Katanas
are awesome, not divinely-crafted. Pshhh.
The Katana of Narcissus: The blade of a katana
is a beautiful mirror. Anybody wielding a katana with
this super-slick feature can hold up the weapon not to
attack, but as a reflection in which an opponent can
get totally lost, for the opponent sees a perfect version of himself in the mirrored blade. The player rolls
Presence + Weaponry + the katanas damage rating.
The opponent must counter with a Wits + Composure
roll. If the player gets more successes, then the foe is
hypnotized by his sweet-ass reflection in the sweet-ass
katana for a number of turns equal to successes gained
by the player over the opponents own roll (minimum
of one). The character cannot attack at that time, or
thatll fuck this whole thing up. So dont do that.
The Sexy Katana: Anybody wielding a katana
looks super-hot. A katanas all steel-sexy, all gleam
and reflection, all Zenfucker delicious. Am I right?
You just want to bang the shine right off a katana,
and you would, if the process wouldnt slice up your
pink parts and leave you with something that looks
like a plate of tuna tartare. Still, the person holding the katana becomes the vortex of lust. Assume
that someone holding a katana automatically gains
the Striking Looks Merit (p. 117, World of Darkness
Rulebook) at four dots. If the character already possesses the Merit at that level, well, too fuckin bad.
Go cry to Grandma. See if shell give you some candy
to soothe your aching rear.
The Super Slicey-Slice Machine: The biggest,
coolest thing a katana should be able to do is cut the
unmerciful hell out of everything it meets. It should
be like the Devils own thorn-studded cock swinging wildly and brashly about, knocking over furniture,
stabbing foes in the soul, bisecting oncoming vehicles,
all that. Take this feature, and the katana now gains
the 7-Again quality. Yes, thats right. The 7-Again
quality. Which means, in retrospect, rolling a 7
counts as a success on the attack roll. Thats called
reverse engineering. Suck it.
On Vile-Bodied Feculence and

Moral Degeneration
A brief story: a friend used to always play total
freakazoid characters. Were talking unmercifully foul
incarnations of fiction, here. A tall blue vampire in
S&M gear that got a sexual thrill from throwing people
down stairs? Sure. A werewolf with an unhealed,
smashed-in skull (that was home to the werewolf s own
soup pot) and a stench so foul that others had to make
rolls not to throw up if he got to close? Yep.
Some people just like to play deep,

deep mutants. So, heres the feature to
allow them that very pleasure.
You want to play someone just
super fucking bizarre or crazy holy
shit disgusting, thats your business.
The system for just such a character
is that you may choose one of three
effects as a permanent feature for
your character:
Like with the aforementioned
werewolf character, when people get
near you, they might want to throw
up. Youre just too goddamn nasty.
Maybe you have a dick for a nose.
Or maybe your nipples constantly
secrete a fishy oil like what comes
out of a pug dogs anal glands. You
have a radius around your character
equal to 10 minus your characters Presence dots in
feet. If anybody enters that verboten circle, they must
succeed on a Stamina + Composure roll. Failing that
roll, they vomit.
Youre a moral degenerate. A superfreak of unholy proportions. Your very existence sends the moral
compasses of those you know into a wild, chaotic spin.
Anytime any character within eyesight of you is the
subject of a degeneration roll, that player suffers -1
die to that roll.
Every other players character must take a mild derangement while your character remains living (or, in the
case of vampires and other dead-ish critters, existing).
The Really Good Monster and the

Teachable Moment
Everybody always wants to play the good vampire or the noble werewolf or Harry Potter or some
shit. Blah blah blah honorable blah blah redemption snore wheeze masturbate. Hey, you want to play
that way? Im not here to get in your way. Im here
to empower you, like sticking a battery up your ass.
Bzzt.
The rules for this are very simple:
If you choose to be a Good Monster, you gain +2
dice on any roll made to resist degeneration. Of course,
the bigger they are, the harder they fallif you still
manage to suffer degeneration, you automatically gain
a severe derangement. Do not pass go, do not collect
your syphilis medication, go straight to Crazy Jail.
Also, anytime your character invokes a teachable moment (also known as a lesson), you gain an
experience point. Teachable moments might include
any narrative event that reinforces a moral theme:
Having sex makes you turn into an evil vampire,
Eating the flesh of humans is a no-no, Dont do
drugs, Stay in school, Milk does a body good.
Warm, cuddly stuff like that.
Robot Parts
I dunno about you, but I really just want some
robot parts. How cool would that be? Dude! Like a
big robot fist that helps me open stuck jars, or a bulky
metal jaw that lets me chew through trees and doors
and my stupid neighbors. Sweet Jabbering Jesus, I want
that so bad my loins ache!
Anyway, robot parts are so cool, I could write a
whole supplement called World of Darkness: Super
Cyborg Stuff. In fact, I keep sending in pitches for that,
but they wont hire me for it. Actually, they didnt hire
me for this job, either. Im just tired of waiting. Im
writing it anyway, fuck those guys. Ive already hired
a gang of hacker thugs to crack the White Wolf / CCP
website so I can just post this without their approval.
Its fine. Theyre totally going to love it. Eddy Webbs
a sucker for this stuff. He has a whole calendar on his
cubicle wall of Deadly Lesbian Schoolgirls Featuring
Robot Parts. Ive seen it. I know, because I sleep under
his cubicle at his feet when hes not paying attention.
His shoes smell like fear. Shhh.
Point is, I could give you like, 25 billion words
on robot parts, but I dont have 25 billion words, so
Im just going to give you a handful of words and an
easy system to go along with it. Ready? Hunker down,
because here it comes.
Tie a desired robot part to a single Attribute. You
determine what that means, but some examples might
be a steel vocoder stapled to your neck that makes
your voice bad-ass and booming (Presence), a whirring hard drive jacked into the cozy space between the
hemispheres of your brain-meats (Intelligence), or an
exoskeleton made of robot bones or the secret vampire
metal known as Bloodtanium (Stamina).
You buy the robot part with Merit dots. The
part costs as many dots as you want that governing
Attribute boosted by. Or, The part costs as many
dots as by which you want that governing Attribute
13
the actual hacks
boosted. I think Im not supposed to end a sentence

with a preposition. Though, Im still allowed to end
a sentence with a smiley-face, right? :) Or a threat to
your family I WILL KILL YOUR MOTHER?
Relax, Im not going to kill your mother. Shes
too good in bed.
Zing!
Where were we? Right. Robot part equals Merit
dots. The Attribute boosted gains a bonus equal to
the dots purchased for that robot part. So, if you
buy Brain-Based Hard Drive (Intelligence), you
gain +3 to all Intelligence dice pools. Thats easy
like Sunday morning is what it is. Winner winner
chicken dinner.
With robot parts come a downside, though:
You have lost some of your humanity, and as such,
you lose touch with your mortal Willpower. (Why? I
dunno. Im making this shit up as I go. You try to write
a game supplement while high on angel dust, and well
see how well you do, asshole. Even Hunter S. Thompson wouldnt touch this shit.) Your Willpower pool
now comprises only your Composure or your Resolve
dots, and remain unmodified by any robot part that
affects either Attribute. You choose which Attribute
governs your Willpower score. Thats on you. You pick.
Leave me out of it.
Sacred Vagina
(This is the counterpart to Fearful Priapism,
found on p. 9. And just as a reminder to you anatomyaddled folks out there: the penis is not the vagina, nor
is the vagina the penis. Okay? Okay.)
Anytime Im on an archaeological expedition,
Im always digging up ancient goddess statutes,
and dang if they dont have some sacred vaginas.
Sometimes theyre huge, like hungry mouths. Other
times, the statues have like, five or seven different yonis. See, the ancient goddesses had magical
vaginas (alternate names: va-jay-jays, vagoohas,
vajimmies, or the Socialist Republic of vaChina).
From those wombs, other gods and goddesses were
born. Sometimes, whole seas or swaths of darkness
emerged from that lady crevasse. Doesnt matter. I
bang em all.
A character with this benefit has a sacred vagina. Its
really that simple. Its magic. It does tricks. Its divine.
The divine hoo-ha offers the character a handful
of benefits:
First, the character can hide one Size 5 (or smaller) object up inside. No roll necessaryjust a spread
and tuck, and the object is concealed. It cannot be
seen. It cannot be read by any gauges or devices.
Second, the character gains the Disarm Merit (p.
110, World of Darkness Rulebook) for free. The sacred
vagina is the weapon that disarms an opponent.
Third, the vagina serves as a five-dot Mentor (p.
115, same book, never again known as TWODRB, or
two-derb). The character is, as described, pivotal
14
Dudes of Legend
to the vaginas agenda. For one additional experience

point, say vaginas agenda 25 times in a row, reallyfast. Go ahead. Ill wait.
Fourth, any children born from that womb is a
monster. Roll a d10, and the result on that die is the
type of monster born:
Die
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Result Monster Type

Vampire
Werewolf
Mage
Changeling
Promethean
Lucifuge Hunter
Sin-Eater
Ghost
Demon-Possessed
A Unicorn
Strippers Make the Bestest

Characters Ever
Do not judge the humble stripper, for the stripper
is queen. (Or kingmale strippers are subject to the
same gris-gris, by and large.) You want to be the coolest character in the history of all World of Darkness
characters? Go stripper. Go stripper right now.
Why, you ask? Let me count the ways.
First, strippers be super-athletic. You ever see one
wrap herself around that gleaming pole? She whirls around
the top of that thing like the blade in a blender. Holy
bendy straw, Batman. Back arched, legs kicking, hair
whipping around so hard and fast itll choke you if you get
too close. That there tells us that a stripper gains a free
Athletics Specialty per dot of Athletics purchased.
Second, strippers be violent. Because of that uberathleticism, the stripper can kick your ass so hard itll
split you in twain right at the butthole. This isnt just
roleplaying game stuff. This is real. This is truth. Ive
seen it happen. One hard kick and whoosh: its an
evacuation of feces and viscera. They have to have
that in their arsenal of abilities, because all too often
some asshat gets grabby and the bouncer is off sucking blow from a toilet seat, so its up to the stripper to
whoop some shit. Thus, any stripper character gains
+3 to any Brawl rolls.
Third, strippers be rich. You might be the funkiest,
nastiest stripper working the stagewere talking loose
teeth, nipple sores, some kind of donkey syphilisand
youll still bring home some nice cash at the end of the
night. (Youll probably gather a flock of guys who are
basically worshippers of donkey syphilis; they consider
it some kind of sacred superorganism on par with a
low-ranking god or demon.) Stripper characters start
the game with two dots in Resources.
Fourth and finally, strippers be crazy. Its just
another weapon in a strippers arsenal. A stripper
character automatically gains a mild derangement.
The Trenchcoat of
Hotness and Holding
A bunch of dickheads wore trenchcoats when
they waded into their high school, killing people,
and that somehow demonized the trenchcoat. Well,
thats just a flaming hunk of garbageits not like the
trenchcoats themselves killed people. The trenchcoats did not whisper psychic entreaties of pain and
nightmare into the ears of the killers (though this
is the World of Darkness, so I just gave you a story
seeduse it or lose it).
Nay, trenchcoats are in fact the bees pajamas and
the cats knees.
British soldiers and officers in WWI and WWII
used the trenchcoat precisely because it is a bad-ass
coat. All the little rings and strappies (not a word) are
great for holding map tubes, knives, hand grenades,
iPhones, whatever. Plus, you know who else wore the
trenchcoat? Rick from Casablanca. And Dick Tracy.
And Inspector Clouseau.
Functional, and looks cool. What more do
you need?
Game stats, thats what.
All trenchcoats in the game can hold an alarming wealth of the characters inventory. The character
can conceal materials whose Size scores equal up to
10 so, he could carry ten flashlights (each Size 1),
or he could carry one rile and one great ax (each Size 5),
or he could even carry and conceal a single sports car

(Size 10).
Further, the player can choose the color of the
trenchcoat, and the color chosen provides its own
added bonus:
Black. Black trenchcoats are the trenchcoats of
bad-asses. A black trenchcoat provides a +3 bonus to
the wearers Intimidation rolls.
Brown. Brown trenchcoats are the trenchcoats of
detectives. Its true. Look it up. As such, a character wearing just such a coat gains +3 to all Investigation rolls.
Gray. Gray trenchcoats are the trenchcoats of
artists and writers and other weirdos. Those wearing a
gray trenchcoat gain +3 to all Expression rolls.
White. Listen, anybody who wears a white
trenchcoat is probably some kind of evil wizardor
maybe the Devil hisself. So, white trenchcoat = +3
bonus to all Occult rolls.
Some Vibrant Color. Trenchcoats of other
colorspink, lime green, mauveare pretty dang
freakshow. In fact, such a trenchcoat provides no
added bonus, but instead offers the wearer a curse: a
temporary derangement (mild) that affects the character while the coat is worn.
The Truth About Desert Eagles

Somewhere along the way, somebody saw the big
hand cannon known as the Desert Eagle and heard
the name Desert Eagle and was all like, Im too
lazy to look at other guns and their cool
names. Nobody talks about the Beretta
Cheetah. Or what about the Springfield
MC Operator, which sounds like some
DJing assassin who will scratch a phat beat
before planting two .45 slugs in your lungbeef? Lets not forget the Ruger Freakshow
Fistcock, a .50 caliber fully-auto machine
pistol. (Okay, lets forget that one, since I
just made it up.)
Fine, fine, you want the Desert Eagle
to be totally bad-ass and live up to the
reputation it has been given, lets do that.
Lets amp this fucker up.
Here are the new Desert Eagle rules.
The gun still works like a big booming
handgun (see Heavy Pistol, p. 169, World
of Darkness Rulebook, though the Desert
Eagle may also get some word count in
either of the Armory booksIm too lazy
to look, plus Im covered in Cheeto dust
and dont want to grease up the pages with
snack pollen). So, the gun could still blow
a hole in somebody. Or, it could blow a
glory hole in a bathroom stall wall, if you
know what I mean. You know. I know
you know.
Ah, but the new Desert Eagle rules
gives it an advantage over other guns.
the actual hacks
15
Before firing the weapon, the Storyteller should

roll a magical, reflexive die a single d10. If that
die comes up as a success (8, 9, 10), then in addition to firing a bullet, the gun also fires an actual
screeching eagle from the barrel. This eagle will attack the target, and when that target is dispatched
(meaning, fucking dead), the eagle will fly away.
(Which means that somewhere, there lurks a colony
of pistol-spawned eagles with glinty, steely eyes and
a hunger for hot lead.)
The Real Desert Eagle

The eagle spawned by the gun has the following stats:
Skills: Athletics 3, Brawl 3, Intimidation 2,
Survival 4
Willpower: 5
Initiative: 6
Defense: 4
Speed: 13 (flight only; species factor 10)
Size: 3
Weapons/Attacks: Vicious Eagle Talons, 1(L)
* You might be asking yourself, Why the hell does
a stupid eagle have Composure? Or Manipulation?
Does that mean that the eagle can manage to not look
like an asshole in a social situation? Or that he might,
on a good dice roll, be able to sell me a used car? Yes.
It means both of those things. Now lie back and
think of England.
The Wacky Fishmalk Is King

Mental illness is serious business. And thats why were not going to touch it with a 10-foot-pole.
Were playing a game, goddamnit.
Game and serious examination of mental disorders do
not go hand-in-hand. Lawn
darts, thats a game. Sos
BATTLESHIP. Its time to
bring the fun back into
the functionally insane.
Ah, but whered the term
come from?
In Ye Olden Times, there
existed a type of vampire
known as a Malkavian, and
an Ancient Tapestry
depicted a Malkavian knight in his
man-panties
16
Dudes of Legend
standing near some crazy dude making out with a fish.

Hence the term, fishmalk.
A fishmalk assumes that crazy equals funny. Instead
of a guy who sits in the corner and cuts himself because
the angels told him to, you might envision some freaka-palooza in a mining helmet running around town,
beating people to death with a double dildo.
The first instance? Neither fun, nor funny.
The second? Hilarious! And fun-to-play!
Madcap madness should thusly be rewarded.
For every derangement gained during play, the
character gains a dot of Wits, but loses a dot of Resolve,
Composure, or Intelligence. Further, any time the
player plays up one of the characters derangements for
entertainment purposes rather than serious, brooding
blah-blah-blah, the player gains an experience point.
The experience point should only be rewarded if the
player made somebody laugh, snort, clap, or gibber.
Should the player annoy the holy fuck out someone,
no experience point should be rewarded, and someone
might consider spitting on that players dice, or eating
his snacks.
Were Gonna Mary Sue

This Motherfucker
Concept: the Mary Sue character. Heard of it?

Basically, its the idea that some characters are essentially over-perfect mirror images of their creators.
They have no flaws. They dont even have a lot of personality. Theyre predominantly
passive; things happen to them
rather than things happening
because of them. The author
favors the character and keeps
them out of conflict because,
duh, the authors sees herself
in that char-
Double Dildo As Weapon

Wow, as soon as we put in beating people to
death with a double dildo, we got an alarming flurry
of emails into the ol inbox asking for weapon stats
on a double dildo.
Okay, thats a lie. But we anticipate the stuffing of
said inbox. Shut up. This is probably the coolest sidebar
in the history of White Wolf Game Studios, and you
should be proud to witness it.
So, weapon stats. Double dildo. Here goes.
Third, the character is super-precious. She gains

+3 to all Social rolls.
Fourth, other characters love to help her. Any
time a character performs a roll on her behalf (they
do it so she doesnt have to), that character gains a
+3 to that roll.
One downside to the Mary Sue phenomenon: at
the beginning of every game session, the Storyteller
gets to roll a single ten-sided die. If that die comes
up a 1, then the Mary Sue character dies a horrible
death at some point during that game session. Were
talking unmercifully grisly: a wood chipper, a syphilitic
sewer monster, a 50 lb. breeding ball of tapeworms in
the innards, something just downright awful. This is
the universe counterbalancing the Mary Sue situation.
Because the universe gets its due.
Damage: 2(B)
Size: 2 when unfurled, but you could probably
horseshoe that sonofabitch and shrink it down to
Size 1.
Cost: (Its not like theyre lacquered in gold
Whats not to love about a teenaged girl in a
leaf, cmon.)
school uniform (plaid skirt, blue sweater?) who hapSpecial: Knockout (p. 168 of World of Darkness
pens to be whipping around a dangerous manriki-gusari
Rulebook), but suffers -1 Durability
at her foes?
Deadly schoolgirls are so cool, I just want to fill a
room with them and roll around on top of them. Not
acter. The Mary Sue character cant be in a bus acin a sexual way. And they can be of age, if that freaks
cident, because the author doesnt want to be in a
you out. They can be 18-year-old shouldve-alreadybus accident, and the Mary Sue character is only a
graduated seniors. Or maybe theyre college students.
thinly veiled doppelganger of the author and so on,
Hell, they could be 40-year-old housewives as long as
and so forth.
they get the uniform and the deadliness right.
You want to play a Mary Sue?
What were we talking about? What is this product,
You got it. Time to throw yourself into the game.
again? Oh. Shit. Right. Game supplement. Got it. You
The rules for this are:
need game systems. Fine. Calm down. Here, take
First, your characters name is your own name.
this handful of dick pills and Ambien. Itll chill
Second, your character has no Vice. She
you out real nice.
(or he, dont be fooled the gender-specific
The game system for the deadly schoolgirls name) only has a Virtue. She can
girl trope is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. This
regain Willpower through Virtue the
feature confers upon its bearer two benefits:
way one does normally through Vice
The Deadly Part: The character kicks
anytime she expresses her Virtue, she
ass, all nimble-like. In all combat-related rolls,
can regain one point of Willpower. If
substitute Strength with Dexterity. Further, the
she expresses Virtue in a big
character gains the 8 Again quality on all attack
way, sacrificing something
rolls made with martial arts weapons.
to do so, she can regain all
The Schoolgirl Part: The characlost Willpower.
ter learns things easily, because, dangit,
shes a schoolgirl. The experience costs
for all Mental Skills are halved.
Sure, you can play a schoolboy,
too, but is that really a trope? Really?
I dont think so. But were
not sexist. Play a
schoolboy. You
can play a
transgen-
You Are a Deadly Schoolgirl
the actual hacks
17
dered dolphin as long as you stuff your beak and

blowhole into a schoolgirls costume and stick a pair of
nun-chuks in those sexy flippers. Do what thou wilt is
the whole of this alternative publishing product.
You Might As Well Jump
If you took The Matrix and made it have sex with

The Crow, the resultant film-baby would be the finest
movie that ever existed.
Alternately, if you took any of the Matrix sequels,
and had them mate with any of the Crow sequels,
youd create a legion of half-aborted monster babies
that would wriggle and slough off poisonous skin and
theyd eventually swarm our cities and use our children for fuel.
So dont do that. But thats really neither here
nor there.
Still, in the first of each series, one of the baddestassed things is how the characters can leap willy-nilly
between buildings. Doesnt matter how far apart they
are. They just can. Eric Draven runs and leaps. Neo
does the same. Its a ballet of building-leaping.
With this element in place, you can do that. You
just can. No roll necessary. Just do it. I mean, you can
spend a Willpower if you feel guilty, but thats kind
of silly. Okay, fine, fine, you want a restriction? The
buildings have to be next to one another. They cant
be like, a thousand miles apart. Thats stupid that youd
even think you could do that. Why would you think
that? Were you mule-kicked? I was mule-kicked. That
fucked me up for like, years. Any time I do something
stressful, I smell mule hooves. Its in my nose right
now, because writing this is totally freaking me out.
Thats probably also the peyote.
Mash It Up For
Maximum Supremacy
As noted earlier, if you take three random feature
hacks from this project and smash them together like
two greasy boogers, you are almost certain to obtain
some level of transcendent genius. Im not fucking with
you. Itll elevate your game. You will see things youve
never seen before. Your eyes will roll back in your head.
Your toes will curl. Your blood will turn to fire, and your
tears will taste of ecstasy. Itll be like getting a handjob
from an angel, or a blumpy from a demon.
Dont believe me? Lets mash up some of shiznit,
and see what we get.
Gregor The Bear Piznewski
Features: Homoeroticism Equals Secret Power,

Strippers Make the Bestest Characters Ever, The
Trenchcoat of Hotness and Holding
This guys awesome. Lets picture it together:
red lights, some sexy thump-thumpin club music, a
18
Dudes of Legend
Blumpy
A blumpy, if you dont know, is a portmanteau of
the word blowjob and dump. Uhh, with a y tacked
on at the end because it sounds cute, I guess.
So, in other words, if you were to receive, ahem,
oral favors while sitting on the toilet and taking out
your, erm, biological trash, that would be a blumpy.
This is a game supplement, so I guess you need
rules? Or something? Fine.
Heres the system: if your character can convince
another character to provide him with a blumpy, your
character gets to re-roll one failed roll in that game
session. Why? I dunno. Im just making this shit up.
Thats all game systems are, man. Its someone just
inventing a bunch of nonsense and duct taping rules
to it. Hey, youre the deviant who demanded game
rules for a blumpy. Thats on you. Youre going to Hell,
not me.
Oh, speaking of Hellif you do as mentioned and
receive a blumpy from a demon, you get three re-rolls,
and those-rerolls arent limited to that game session.
You can save them and cherish them the way a hamster
saves food in his cheek pouches.
gleaming golden pole. Out on the stage strolls a big

lumbering barrel of a dude. Hes got mutton chops on
his face you just want to eat with a little barbecue
sauce, but that aint nothing compared to the swishing shadow that is his totally excellent black-as-night
trenchcoat. He whirls around. He pulls out fistfuls of
candies and throws them to his adoring audience. He
lets them stuff fat wads of cash into itand since it
holds a near endless supply of stuff, that trenchcoat
can take a heckuva lot of green. Then! Pow! He whips
the trenchcoat off and its him in his hairy, undulating gloryhis audience, composed largely of oiled-up
dudes, bow and worship and jabber prayers to him,
and The Bear can feel his secret power growing. It
pulses within. So when the Somalian vampire pirates
break down the door and come in, AK-47s chattering, The Bear knows its on. He channels his Numen
(Telekinesis!) and with his mind withdraws a Kawasaki motorbike out of his trenchcoat. He leaps atop
it, revs its engine, and lurches the bike forward into
the throng of attacking blood-hungry pirates. Freeze
frame. Heavy metal chord. Yes.
Yuki and Her Unicorn (Timothy

Sprinkles McVengeance)
Features: The Beast-Rider Cometh, Murder Systems, You Are a Deadly Schoolgirl
All she remembers is blood and asphaltshe

doesnt fully recall that day when, on the way home
from school, she was attacked by a roving band of
postal clerks driven mad from gonorrhea. She doesnt
remember how they bludgeoned her with Priority
Mail boxes filled with rocks. She doesnt remember
how she died, only that she did. Thankfully, a magic
unicorn felt her pain from across the membrane separating worlds, and he came, hungry to sup on her
newfound need for revenge. Now, Yuki is once more
alive, infused with the magic breath and healing spit
of Timothy Sprinkles McVengeance, her pet unicorn.
She rides on his majestic white back down the halls
of her prep school, her plaid skirt stained with the
blood of those who dared bully her. Any who stand in
the way of her finding out the truth about her death
find themselves on the deadly end of a unicorn horn

or a whirling chainand as they fall, reaped by her
need for justice, she gains deeper power, a ch-ching
of experience points racking up on her character
sheet. One day soon she may learn the truth about
her attackers. Or maybe shell learn why all unicorns
have three names. Who knows? And really, who even
cares? Shes a bad-ass little schoolgirl on the back of
a unicorn and covered in blood. What more do you
people want from me? I give and I give, and all you
do is take and take. Youre a gaggle of needy, selfish
jerks. Thats right. I said it. Im throwing pearls before
swine, but the pearls go clattering into the heating
vents while you pigs snort and rut and hump the pillows with your mud-covered pork parts. I dont even
know why I bother, honestly.
the actual hacks
19
How to Be
g
n
i
k
c
Fu
Awesome
Strippers?
Awesome.
Lesbian strippers?
Double awesome.
Lesbian strippers w
hipping off their tr
enchcoats only to
reveal a katana tuck
ed delicately in a ga
rter or g-string?
That is a face
full of awesome.
Your face will be

This book includes:
New rules for your World of
Darkness game.
More awesome than you can possibly handle.
Also, its pretty dirty.
For use with the
World of Darkness Rulebook
0-6666-696-0 WWoRLY? $0.69US
dripping
with awesome.
The sauce of awesome will

give you a nasal enema.

Mirrors World of Darkness Bleeding Edge and Infinite Masa

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Bleeding Edge

Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness

Cyberpunk destroyed science fiction.

Written by: Russell Bailey

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness

Cyberpunk destroyed science fiction.

Enough with the

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

in cyberpunk publishing. Bruce Sterlings 1988 novel

those up to the World of Darkness we know. As Gibson

How to Use this

This book explores how to create your own setting

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

- Dr. Frank Nicholas

Our cyberpunk adaptation adds new elements to

Think back to your characters childhood, her

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

Bridge and Tunnel

major link to the world beyond his suburb, bringing in

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

Relationships: Estranged parent, Tenured professor,

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

sideline, though: servicemen want a lot of things that

What does your character bring to the group? Can

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

character receives a free Skill Specialty, as with the first

acter naturally its into a role then, sure, add it like

Roles follow this format:

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

clips gone viral. Whatever the case, Celebrity Faces use

programs. She wont admit that now, though, and do you

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

Plugins represent modiications to a characters

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

her a better marksman. However, Plugins usually wont

say, a spike that stabs out of a characters wrist, simply

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

Layer that approximates Obfuscates Cloak of Night, you

Happy Place or Memetic Filter

The Memetic Filter is a different technology with

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

heart may even have stopped. With your roll of Pep

When a character makes a choice that pushes them

All You Need is Kill

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

keep in mind that systems like Morality are a little

Whether youre going to sell out or rock out, the first

Organizations do not possess Initiative, Defense or

Themes and Props

Now that weve discussed how cyberpunk characters can

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

Supernatural characters need to stay outside, or at

affordable, particularly to agoraphobic telecommuters

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

targeted, if they band together as a virtual nation instead

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

The dark side of globalization is also much as it ever

which the others can meet in safety and on common

Devin Hoffarth (order #2454497)

this case, human social ones) and connect them (social

The world got too big, though. The disasters that