FIRST TEAM: LAST CHANCERS
Pentex is up to something.
... and it’s something BIG.
This is a pitch & solicitation for a game, which I will run online for interested players. This text will serve as a living & public-facing reference-document, designed for use by my players, to be regularly updated over the course of our Chronicle.
Brought to you absolutely free to enjoy, to dick-around with, & to share – as always – by the fine folks of my Patreon.
Hugest of all possible special thanks to Daemon R. Allwardt, Matt Banach, Phil Brucato, Sye Cole, Nick Esposito, Dylan Hanny, Christopher Hazlett, Josh Heath, Derek Reeverts, Rich Rittenhouse, Amul Tevar, Joey Wallace, Joe Weinberg, and Owen Westcot.
And whatever kind of hot, nasty, oozing new extinction-level bug-fuckery Pentex has got brewing in the back offices, one thing is for damn sure: it ain’t good.
... which, incidentally, brings us to you & your new pack.
You’ve just been sworn-in to a most-sacred mission, and stride now to war for the literal continued existence of Gaia herself: your righteous vow commands you strike fast, move in shadow, conceal your strength, sow great confusion among your innumerable enemies, leave neither a single stone unturned nor a single witness standing, and -- above all -- puzzle-out precisely what the fuck these smug, devious, buttoned-down little corporate-psychopath shitheads are trying to pull for the foul “glory” of their grotesque master, the Wyrm.
And then to kill every mother-fucking last one of ‘em.
[Table of Contents, which you are reading right now]
[A Storyteller Solemnly Swears]
- Board-Certified Seal-of-Approval
Celebrity Guest-Stars! ... or “Important NPCs of this Chronicle”
Because this is no ordinary black-ops monkeywrench operation, friend.
Whatever horrifying, nightmarish new “Special Project” the grinning bastards on the Board of Directors at Pentex are cooking-up, those schemes are bound in bane & balefire, sealed with silver & sorcery, wrapped skintight in unutterably-ancient-yet-somehow-still-shrieking White Howler flesh: a full-ass six-hundred-&-sixty-six levels above top-secret, locked-away so snug that even the most leet hackers, data-pirates, info-sec operators, and dumpster-diving ninja-assassins in service to Gaia haven’t been able to pry-loose more than the barest echoes of whispers from the churning belly of the great beast.
Not that we haven’t tried, obviously.
Problem is, Earth Mother’s chosen have very recently lost three full packs of our best & brightest cyber-warfare specialists: proud champions reppin’ the Random Interrupts, the Rat Finks, and the Corporate Wolves (alongside their Kin, their allies, their Fetishes, their Caerns, and their tech) ... all taken-out with extreme prejudice, military-grade ordinance, and unholy, blinding-fast surgical precision by rapid-response First Teams that -- if one were properly paranoid -- might lead one to suspect that Pentex has themselves an “inside man”.
Gaians can play at this game too, assholes.
Pentex likes to think that their treacherous, conniving, lily-white Ivy-League asses invented double-double secret-reverse counter-counterintelligence state-military-industrial espionage-operations?
Your boy Cockroach, just as a ONE example, came-up hard on the mean streets of the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, which aced-out 95% of the life on the planet, and was over two hundred million years old at the time of the Eocene epoch – a 22-million-year period of flaming radioactive planet-wide upheaval that included a particularly unpleasant winter (which just so happened to last somewhere in the range of 100,000 years) – a solid-ass thirty-five million years ago, back when the world, no bullshit, had mo’fucking rings around it.
Note that his ugly little ass survived -- thrived -- up to the release of Morbius on Blueray at Blockbuster (and beyond!) without the benefit of thumbs.
Cockroach don’t fuck around, is the point.
Sneaky & clever though he may be, however, he’s just a Totem of Wisdom ... meaning that even his most intricate, complex, wheels-within-wheels, man-behind-the-man nine-part-harmony Xanatos Gambit plots are nothing against the dizzying designs of Coyote, Cuckoo, and/or Fox.
SO, THIS JUST IN: Pentex has won the coin-toss & chosen to receive; according to this note I was just handed by my producer, they also wanna ... wat. omg lazers, does that say, “we trash the rulebook & play dirty lmfao”?
Well ... alright, alright, alright. So mote it motherfuckin’ be, motherfuckers.
We’re doing this shit olde-skool now: deep-cover, deniable ops. No records, no receipts, no witnesses. No paper-trail, no chain-of-command, no back-up, no plan B. No limit, no quarter, no exit-strategy; no brakes on the Apocalypse-train.
Underground, radio-silent, safeties-off; going full dark: inner circle only.
Your handler has pulled-in every favor, ringer, expendable, has-been, old dog, youngblood, wash-out, dirty dealer, troublemaker, loose cannon, burned asset, low bastard, basket-case, wandering drifter, retired killer, and rainy-day BREAK GLASS ONLY IN THE EVENT OF EMERGENCY secret hold-out weapon she’s been quietly collecting-up over the last three & half decades.
Calling all freaks, as they say. ‘Cuz that’s the name of the game.
If you or any member of your pack is caught or killed, the Garou Nation will disavow all knowledge of your existence.
Hope you enjoyed getting to watch your own funeral from the nosebleed seats, kid. Might wanna strap-in & kiss your sweet ass goodbye. Because it’s about to get bumpy ... and real, real ugly.
Welcome to your new job at Pentex.
SMALL WORLD: y’know all those old borders & ancient rivalries? Like, say ... the ones dividing the Western Cordordiat of the Garou Nation from the Beast Courts of the Emerald Mother for, like, untold millennia? Well, thing is, they shatter into utter, insignificant meaninglessness before the sheer awful, global scale of Wyrm & Weaver locked in final battle.
BIG BUSINESS: the legions of Pentex are endless, outnumbering the champions of Gaia not by two, not ten, but by UNCOUNTABLE orders of magnitude; they can outspend us a thousand-to-one without even trying. ‘Course, the nice people over at Dynamic Technology International, the Mikoshi Conglomerate, Star-Mart, and Shinzui Industries are no slouches, either ... and they, interestingly enough, also want you dead!
PAST IS PROLOGUE: anyone who tells you the War of Rage was, quote, “a long-ass time ago” didn’t learn a goddamn thing: the unforgivable sins of our tragic, blood-streaked history shall not be forgotten ... or, I guess, we could just go ahead & round-off the next million years to yet another “particularly vivid, gore-drenched grind of ceaseless, ever-escalating, and infinitely-recursive fun-house-mirror horror-shows”.
FUTURE-SHOCK: ... but those internal memos outlining Pentex’s plans & operational schematics for the next century of their uncontested control over Earth? Yeah. Uh, they’re actually quite a bit worse: hyper-detailed, high-definition, vivid, full-color, glossy, and sickening in the extreme (with pie-charts!). We’re up against an all-star assemblage of clever & detail-oriented motherfuckers with an agenda-most-obscene... and, one financial quarter at a time, very increasingly with the means to make it happen.
bi-weekly (every other week) availability for a 4-6 hour online game.
basic-to-intermediate experience with tabletop roleplaying games.
basic-to-intermediate experience with Werewolf: The Apocalypse and/or the greater olde-skool World of Darkness setting.
willingness to help every player at the table, as an active participant in shared-world storycraft, to create a fun, memorable, and above-all-mutually-satisfying tale: a high-octane, heartfelt, hilarious thrill-ride of action-packed international espionage in which super-powered warriors of Gaia rip monsters & finance-bro into festive intestine-confetti.
each player will create a new, unique character using the Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition Core Rulebook and Changing Breeds texts, building a PC of any Breed, Auspice, Tribe, and background the player desires, subject to the Infrequency Background (below).
characters may begin play with extra Renown, up to an amount required for the character to reach Rank 2.
characters may begin play with up to 50 Experience Points.
a character created for play in this Chronicle must be both willing & able to “go deep-cover” as a member of a Pentex First Team.
a character created for this Chronicle is, by default, legally dead ... and is counted among the honored (or, I guess, dishonored?) dead by the Garou Nation / Beast Courts, depending on which way the player wants to go with it: any PC who wishes to maintain Allies, Contacts, Kinfolk, or a Mentor within the greater worldwide society of Gaian-aligned Fera will need the Lying-Ass Liar Social Merit (detailed below).
As an aside, the spirit-world is -- on the other hand -- very much aware that the PCs are still alive & kicking: long story short, the PCs do not lose access to the cool benefits of their Rank or their Renown.
“So ... uh? How precisely are they ‘secretly faking their deaths,’ then? If the whole spirit-world knows they’re alive?”
Lol. You mean the same spirit-world that’s casually kept Gaia’s Breath (W20 Changing Breeds, pg. 116) and Veil of the Wani (W20 Changing Breeds, pg. 160) out of the hands of the Garou Nation for literally ever, possibly just for shits & giggles at this point? The shadow-universe of dreams uncoupled from thought, populated entirely by unreliable narrators & constructed entirely of unreliable narration? Where use of the term “veracity” in a sentence has a non-zero-chance of causing the actual floor to scream “IT’S PRONOUNCED VORACITY” at you & then try to eat you?
Yeah, the PCs & their secrets will be fine.
Note that neither players nor characters will be forced to do evil or icky crap to “prove their loyalty to Pentex or the Wyrm”: while the characters may have to work hard & be clever to preserve their dirty secrets, I’m very not interested in running a game where the players are forced to do evil in ANY capacity
A STORYTELLER SOLEMNLY SWEARS
I, Clinton J. Boomer, do hereby promise & avow to never present my players with a “If you’re so evil, eat this kitten” scene or conflict within the context of this, our Chronicle.
Sincerely. Do not worry that it’ll happen. It won’t.
... that said, players are allowed to incorporate such moments into their own backstories & preludes (with Storyteller approval), if they so desire:
For Example: Kyle is playing a cunning Garou who has infiltrated Pentex in the guise of a Ferectoi; he & I decide, together, that -- during his character’s prelude -- he was given a sadistic “loyalty test” by a superior: handed a pistol & told to execute a captured Kinfolk wolf. Through incredible, awesome cleverness on Kyle’s part, his PC was able to prove his loyalty to Pentex beyond a shadow of a doubt ... while also keeping the wolf from being harmed!
Similarly -- and mostly only because it’s literally the focus of the Chronicle -- players will very often be presented with observably evil assignments by their superiors, which they (as a pack) will have to be clever & creative about completing ... or not completing, as they decide.
Por Ejemplo: The PCs are assigned by Pentex to rendezvous with a First Team operating out of Dakar and to thereafter provide material assistance with the unit’s mission:
infiltrate a local cell of the Ahadi (via exploitation of a Kerasi who doesn’t “ping” as Wyrm-tainted)
locate the cell’s hidden Caern
exterminate all members of the Ahadi, including Kinfolk
claim the Caern for the Wyrm
generate evidence pinning the attack on a well-known Silver Fang
The PCs decide, instead, to kill all the members of the First Team & pin the whole fiasco on a “particularly rascally Nuwisha”.
Can they get away with it? Let’s find out!
This is a Werewolf: The Apocalypse Chronicle -- not a more-general World of Darkness Chronicle, nor a “crossover” Chronicle -- which means that a couple of very important things about the setting need to be addressed & clarified pretty much right away.
The grand history & cosmology of the universe, as understood by the Garou, is -- essentially -- correct.
Now, sure ... there are a few fiddly little fine-grained details about the true secret history of reality (like, say, the Insect War mentioned in Ananasi: Changing Breed Book 7, on pages 25-26) known only to non-Garou Fera; these are also true, even if the Garou -- who are only about a million years old, after all -- don’t know about ‘em.
All other supernatural entities, on the other hand, are -- at best -- ignorant about the true shape & meaning of the universe; at worst, they’re tools of Wyrm, of Weaver, or of both: dangerously deluded and/or outright liars.
More specifically: leeches within the context of this Werewolf Chronicle lack things like a “generation,” a “clan,” a “Humanity score,” or even “Disciplines”; they do have what might be referred-to as bloodlines -- the foul undead that, in ancient days, forced the Silent Striders from their homeland in Egypt are said to have been spawned from the cursed, night-black veins of Sutekh, for example -- but anything you think you know about vampires that isn’t on pages 453-455 of the W20 Core Rulebook is pure conjecture (and also probably bullshit).
The same goes double for wizards, ghosts, fair folk, and monster-hunters.
If you really, really wanna be an expert on all the various horrible & mysterious creatures that go bump-in-the-night, be sure to buy up some dots in the Occult Knowledge (and also the Secrets Background).
Remember how I said, above, that any supernatural entity who isn’t one of the Fera is, and I quote: “at best, ignorant about the true shape & meaning of the universe; at worst, they’re tools of Wyrm, of Weaver, or of both: dangerously deluded and/or outright liars”?
Okay, so that’s all true: the Traditions & the Technocracy are both wrong, as is -- to a lesser degree -- any Nephandus who think he’s a servitor of anything but Malfeas: any “Infernal” entity encountered within the context of this Chronicle is, in all probability, just a member of the Maeljin Incarna randomly cosplaying-as-Satan for cheap shits & giggles.
Furthermore, any supernatural entity (who isn’t one of the Fera) is also at least slightly down-powered & sidelined: this is a W20 Chronicle, which means that the Technocratic Union is small-scale, underfunded, hopelessly corrupted from within, and mostly made up of Extraordinary Citizens.
The odds of a HIT Mark out-of-nowhere gunning-down the Perfect Metis at the last possible second to avert the Apocalypse, in other words, are approximately zero-point-zero-zero-null-&-fuckkin’-not-gonna-happen.
... that said, tho, the Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary books are really excellently written, and -- as such -- the M20 texts will serve as this Chronicle’s default “canon reference-documents” in such instances as a W20 book is silent on a particular rules-issue:
you want to play a Martial Artist? M20 pg. 424-426 has got you covered!
your character wants to shoot the gas tank? M20 pg. 459 it is!
you want a weird Merit or Flaw that’s not in the Corebook? Yo, check out the M20 Book of Secrets, friend-o.
Board-Certified Seal-of-Approval
The massive, multiheaded hydra of Pentex trusts no one.
... and that’s not, like, hyperbole, by the way: the PCs, over the course of this Chronicle, will be taking orders from people who all goddamn HATE each other (see below), the majority of whom are actively trying to get one another killed.
It’s a squirming pit of monsters, my friend.
You & your pack are gonna be the one group of people that every member of the Board of Directors trusts to have their back ... and then you will betray the shit out that trust, for great justice, in the sacred name of Gaia.
zero dots (default): an outsider to the dark inner-workings of Pentex, you are – at best – a cog in the machine that it would be mildly inconvenient to Pentex to murder outright; this level of clearance covers everyone from a minimum-wage overnight counter-clerk at your local EndRun 24-hour gas-&-food convenience mart to an average lab-tech who works at Magadon, watches RED Network, and eats at O’Tolley’s three times a week.
1 dot: you’re a bottom-ranking peon who is (nonetheless) initiated into the foul, dark inner workings of Pentex: a First Team private, an associate executive, or a white-level scientist with Special Projects Division. You are cleared to know that “fomori” and “lupines” exist; you are also expected to die (or go to prison) at the whim of a superior.
2 dots: you’re a low-ranking, expendable cog: second-in-command of a First Team, a junior executive, or a green-level scientist with SPD.
3 dots: you’re a middle-ranking, slightly-more-expensive & slightly-less-expendable cog: leader of your own First Team, a supervising executive, or a blue-level scientist with SPD.
4 dots: you’re a high-ranking power-player: a chess-master directing the actions of multiple First Teams, a managing executive at a powerful (and lucrative) Pentex subsidiary, or a yellow-level scientist with SPD.
5 dots: you’re just one step down from the Board of Directors: overseeing multiple elite First Teams, an executive with your own subsidiary, or a red-level scientist with SPD.
6 dots: you’re at the level of the Chief Executive Officer of Global Pentex Security: not technically a member of the Board of Directors, sure ... but you’re on the short-list for membership (and you answer only to them)
7 dots: you’re at the level of a Subdivision Director -- someone like Kiro Yamazaki, Francesco, or Mr. Pochard -- and are a full-fledged member of the Board of Directors
8 dots: you’re at the level of a Division Director -- someone like Adrian Newberry, Chase Lamont, or Harold Zettler -- and are a ranking goddamn member of the Pentex Board
9 dots: you’re at, no shit, the level of actual motherfucking Peter Culliford, Executive Vice President of Pentex
10 dots: you are -- dear, sweet, hot, buttery Jesus -- at the real & actual level of Benjamin Rushing, Executive Director of Pentex
The difficulty of any Investigation, Streetwise, or similar check made to dig-up dirt or secrets on a character who possesses this Background is increased by +1 for each dot in this Background the target possesses over-and-above the investigator.
For Example: The PCs decide that they want to find out the actual, specific address of Adrian Newberry’s vacation home in Nantucket so that they can give him a shotgun enema I mean no, it’s so that they can have, like, flowers & candies delivered. For, uh ... Mother’s Day.
Anyway: since the Director of Operations has 8 dots in this Background and the highest score any PC has in this Background is 3, rolls to get any useful information are at a minimum of +5 difficulty.
This special Background may not be bought above 1 dot at character creation.
This special Background cannot be pooled, and PCs are expected to have different levels in this Background: the acting field-commander of a First Team will have higher “clearance” than her newest recruit, after all.
That said, the total level of trust placed in the PCs (as a team) will always be equal to the lowest Board-Certified Seal-of-Approval rating possessed by any member of the First Team.
This special Background can be used in-place-of & in the same-way-as any one of the following Backgrounds from M20 (pg. 303-328) at any given time: Backup, Influence, Requisitions, Resources, or Secret Weapons.
... of course, actually using your Board-Certified Seal-of-Approval to do shit like crush stories in the media, borrow sports cars & jets, or order a black-ops, attack helicopter extraction from a bad first date is the ABSOLUTE NUMBER ONE way to make your rating in the Background drop like a fucking stone.
Other than, like, fucking up a mission real bad, obvi.
Also, just to be as absolutely clear as possible: the literal, very specific goal of the Chronicle is to get your pack’s Board-Certified Seal-of-Approval rating as high as you can, so that -- just for example -- you can be placed in charge of security during an event where, if anything goes wrong, the entire Board of Directors will die in a horrible series of hilarious toilet-explosions.
Lying-Ass Liar (5 pt. Social Merit)
You have established (or have had established for you) a full alternate identity – complete with documentation – that passes with ease, drawing no suspicion, as a member of another community of supernatural entities. This very well might be the Western Concordiat of the Garou Nation or the Beast Courts of the Emerald Mother ... or it could be another organization altogether (like an international society of leeches, wizards, or even demon-hunters).
Regardless of who -- precisely -- you’ve infiltrated, you command the respect & trust of your “peers” within this organization, alongside a healthy measure of faith in your abilities from more-powerful members of the group.
To clarify, this is some next-level bullshit: a secret identity on top of all the secret identities you already have.
For example: you are Batman, currently operating in Gotham’s underworld as Matches Malone, after faking Batman’s death ... but you can also use the cash & connections associated with Bruce Wayne, if you want.
If you’re a Hakken (who everyone knows is dead) pretending to be a Ferectoi (while serving on your First Team), use of this Merit might mean that you’re also known to be a Child of Gaia Kinfolk: a disguise that involves slapping on some patchouli & a tie-dyed t-shirt, donning hemp sandles, and saying “whoa” a lot.
Or you might be known as the “blood-doll” or “familiar” of a powerful leech.
Or you & your Storyteller might decide that you’re an employee of a corporation like Shinzui International, or an agent of an organization like Strike Force Zero.
And yes, this is totally the sort of thing that a clever Ragabash, Corax, or Nuwisha could set up once the Chronicle has started, if given the time & materials to do so ... but this Merit is useful because it doesn’t involve any rolls (and thus it presents absolutely no risk of failure).
Note that this shit is also not bulletproof: if you’re ever “outed” as a member of a Pentex First Team (or, far worse, as your known-to-be-dead self), the reactions of those who know you only as the-identity-granted-by-this-Merit will be:
followed very rapidly by outright hostility toward your accuser
followed immediately thereafter by you being restrained, detained, and very thoroughly investigated -- just in case! -- by the paranoid people you’ve infiltrated
which may very well wind-up with you dead, and/or with your cover blown (and then also very dead)
You’ll need to work with your Storyteller to determine what specific supernatural group or community – such as the Garou Nation, the Beast Courts, a cabal of wizards (such as the Five Metal Dragons or the Akashayana), or even a night-lit masquerade of leeches – you’ve successfully infiltrated, and in what capacity: while it’s pretty unlikely that you’re able to pass for a high-ranking undead blood-wizard, for example, you might very reasonably adopt the disguise of “a highly trusted servant to an eccentric, paranoid, and agoraphobic elder vampire”.
You’ll also work with your Storyteller to decide whether Pentex knows about your secret identity or not: they’d love to have an asset that can infiltrate a werewolf moot while disguised as a Kinfolk, obviously ... but, y’know, maybe you don’t feel like showing your hand & revealing all your little tricks just yet.
Note that your alternate identity can use your Backgrounds – like Resources (W20 pg. 138) – but that you can also purchase Backgrounds separately: your fake identity might have points in Allies (W20 pg. 135) or Contacts (W20 pg. 136), for example, totally separate from those possessed by any other identities.
... or “Important NPCs of this Chronicle”
Any NPC listed below, alongside any information presented herein about the NPC in question, is automatically known -- with no roll, check, or expenditure-of-resources required -- to ALL player-characters.
In other words: you - as a player - don’t have to memorize any of this crap, because your character has it memorized for you (and you can look it up, right here, any time you want).
Some characters, of course, will have extra information: you’ll want to talk with me (your friendly, helpful Storyteller!) about the very, very special dark & secret shit that only you know.
Your Handler (and her packmates, Sept of the Epic Quest):
Eva Hedwig “Bunny Foo-Foo” Hare, Metis Glass Walker Ahroun
John “John-Boy” J. Jonhson, Lupus Glass Walker Ragabash
Philo “File-[zero]” Taylor-Swift Farnsworth Jr., Homid Boli Zouhisze Theurge
Ignacia Rosa “Iggy” Leon, Homid Glass Walker Philodox
Very Online Larry, Homid Glass Walker Ragabash
Sister Kasmira, Homid Glass Walker Galliard
... vs. the forces of Pentex:
Benjamin Rushing, Executive Director
Peter Culliford, Executive Vice President
Adrian Newberry, Director of Operations
Chase Lamont, Joint Division Director of Acquisitions / Information-Collection
Harold Zettler, Director of Special Projects Division
Franklin Rubin, Director of Project Coordination Division
Francesco, Subdivision Director of Project Iliad
Kiro Yamazaki, Joint Subdivision Director of Project Odessey / Project Aeneid
Kathryn Mollett, Subdivision Director of Human Resources Development
Andre Baptiste, Subdivision Director of Public Relations
Ursula Crane, Subdivision Director of Finance
Ian Robertson, Subdivision Director of Process and Integration
Sir Frederick Appleton, Subdivision Director of Project Lycaon / Neuro-Dynamic Laboratories International
Frédéri Pochard, Subdivision Director without Portfolio
Michael Dragons-Wrath, Chief Executive Officer of Global Pentex Security
Ash Pyralis, North American Chief of Pentex Security
