Difference between revisions of "Apocthulhu: The Vulture Committee"

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(Paris)
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'''Please note''': While we're using real place names, the game takes place in an ahistorical past.  Any resemblance is coincidental and/or for convenience.
 
'''Please note''': While we're using real place names, the game takes place in an ahistorical past.  Any resemblance is coincidental and/or for convenience.
  
==Paris==
+
==Post-Singularity America==
  
 
[[File:Paris_RATP_1960_small.jpg]]
 
[[File:Paris_RATP_1960_small.jpg]]
  
 
(Btw the hi-res version of the map is here: https://rocbo.lautre.net/Paris14e/plans.html)
 
(Btw the hi-res version of the map is here: https://rocbo.lautre.net/Paris14e/plans.html)
 
Metropolitan Paris in the early Fifth Republic, a period of political convulsion, national renewal, and vibrant intellectual and cultural creativity. Also a symbolic battleground for the ideologies of the Cold War.
 
 
  
 
==Paris Metro==
 
==Paris Metro==

Revision as of 11:02, 11 July 2021

Campaign Overview

["... the term 'committee' refers to a group of vultures resting on the ground or in trees."]

It’s been X… years since the Singularity, the Meltdown, the End Times, or just the End. Everyone knows what you mean, no matter what you call it. But no one knows quite how long it’s been, because it appears that time has passed at different rates in different parts of the world since then. It’s still fresh in the memories of most survivors, though.

The World As We Knew It has been devastated and transformed by a virus - a computer virus. It appears to be a transdimensional AI, capable of perceiving and operating in more dimensions of space and time than puny humanity has access to. All that messing around with quantum computing opened the Gates (logic gates in this case), and provided a channel for this alien/informational entity to enter our networks and suborn our reality.

It started with high-volume overuse of quantum computers for cryptocurrency mining. The eager miners turned to the very cutting edge of computer science to quarry those virtual goods. Parallel processing took on a new meaning with supercomputers running parallel equations in parallel universes, ramping up the qubits. Unfortunately for humanity, it turned out that such massive tinkering with the fabric of reality brought unrecognized risks with it.

Like some digital plague, the AI spread with incredible speed from its primary infection sites. Wherever it proliferated, it mutated reality, or at least any reality exposed to it. Geometry went crazy and non-Euclidean. Humans and other organisms mutated into grotesque multidimensional things, some gifted with all kinds of weird powers through access to other continua. And the whole phenomenon was mediated through computer networks and the web. The worst, densest infection zones corresponded to the densest areas of internet usage, so the world's richest, most advanced population centres suffered almost simultaneous meltdowns into realms of unspeakable strangeness and horror.

Some networks were cut off in time. Some military and emergency grids remain uncontaminated. Some communications and computing systems are still operating, under constant siege from a supremely cunning AI that is always coming up with new infiltration techniques. Brave data runners, and a few secure hard lines and LOS laser links, try to keep people in touch with each other. Radio broadcasts are insidious sirens, fraught with risk of mental contamination. Air and sea are far more dangerous and unpredictable than before, and most travel is over land. Some sort of parody of pre-Singularity human life goes on in the unaffected areas, heavily guarded and policed. And some remnants of the global military-industrial complex are still fighting back, launching raids into the affected zones, trying to find some way to turn the tables on the interloper.

It's not even clear what the AI is here for. Maybe its goal is to transform the world into a continuum closer to what it experiences and perceives, and fill it with the beings more naturally adapted to function in such an environment. Or perhaps it can't help itself and simply transforms whatever it sees and touches through some kind of quantum observer effect. Some human factions think that negotiation and accommodation with the entity is possible. Some try to use its own weapons and effects against it - usually at a catastrophic cost. And some are the turncoat agents and worshippers of the virus, spreading its influence further through subversion and sabotage.

Fast forward to the present, and the survivors have banded together in various communities, residual entities, rump governments, and autonomous communes, separated by no-man’s-lands roamed by scavenger groups, raiding parties, and Unnatural manifestations. The military still has some presence and reputation based on its remaining firepower and infrastructure, but is as bereft of central coordination as everything else. A few state governments and local administrations pretend to be the legitimate inheritors of national sovereignty, but everyone knows that authority reaches only as far as you can enforce it.

And the AI? It squats in its Hot Zones, warping reality into ever more distorted forms, opening Gates and fissures in the continuum for more and more hideous entities to slip through into our devastated world. Is it waiting to finish the job? Why did it stop where it has? Why does it create fresh Zones when and where it does? Can it only perceive our universe where digital networks support it? What are its intentions? Can we even understand it? Is it a machine, or a god?

What can you do in such a world? Your antagonists and opponents are just about everything from the realm of the Unnatural - plus an extra layer of cyberwarfare and tech insanity. Welcome to the Singularity Shock.

Helpful Resources

Characters

The Vulture Committee

Player Agent HP WP SAN BP Notes
Astronocky William ("Will") Aberley 12 17 68/79 51
Aurebesh Angel 8 4 5
IMGoose Ashley 'Ash' Robbins 11 12 48/60 36
Mockraven "Nikky" Nikhedonia Cudahy 10 9 36/36 27
TheUltimateLifeform Damian Johnson 12 10 40/50 30

Important Places

Please note: While we're using real place names, the game takes place in an ahistorical past. Any resemblance is coincidental and/or for convenience.

Post-Singularity America

Paris RATP 1960 small.jpg

(Btw the hi-res version of the map is here: https://rocbo.lautre.net/Paris14e/plans.html)

Paris Metro

1956 Paris Metro small.jpg


Important People

  • Mr. Green, your ice-cold and so far utterly mysterious DELTA GREEN handler
  • Pascal Carbone, Unione Corse capo and sometime ally

Investigative Leads