FONDO DE COMERCIO

Scene III: The Shuankhsen's Offer

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would do with the power that he believes he can gain by devouring the Heretic and assimilating the knowledge of Apotheosis. It’s something of a window into his twisted psyche. Really drive home the grotesquerie of the Roller’s custom-built pet abomination.

CHARACTER GOALS

It is all but a foregone conclusion that the characters will reject the Roller’s offer, and it is therefore almost certain that a fight will ensue. That said, a cunning meret may accept the proposal with the intention of betraying the Shuankhsen — right now, the Roller is so blinded by the promise of power that he will not see the deception for what it is, and the characters’ lie may claim a critical advantage in the fight to come.

CONSEQUENCES

Either the Roller’s aberrant Amkhat is destroyed and the characters have thereby declared their enmity toward him, or they have given him reason to believe that they are on his side and have renounced all other allegiances. In either case, they are ready to meet their destiny — and, quite possibly, the destiny of all Arisen — at Hart Island.

OVERVIEW

The site chosen by the Roller for his showdown with the Heretic, Hart Island (also sometimes called Hart’s Island), is a mile-by-quarter-mile islet in Long Island Sound, part of the borough of the Bronx. Over the centuries since Europeans first settled the area, Hart Island has become an ill-omened place, its history one of prison and workhouse, tuberculosis sanatorium and lunatic asylum. Since the dark days of the American Civil War, it has served as a potter’s field, which in modern times groans under the weight of a million graves — many of its tenants nameless and forgotten dead, piled into mass burials or stacked unceremoniously atop one another like so much refuse. It is a site sick with the reek of pain, sorrow, loss, and death. Access to the island is also very strictly limited by the city, which makes the place in every way ideal, both poetically and practically, for the Roller’s intended murder of the Heretic.

A little bit of reading and research on Hart Island can certainly go a long way in capturing the feel (and, if the characters decide to look into it, the history) of the place, but also bear in mind that this is the World of Darkness. Here, Hart Island is filled to bursting with the anonymous corpses of a century and a half. Here, in the island’s various facilities, horrid crimes against basic human decency were the norm, not the exception. Even now, with so many of them having long since gone on to whatever final fate awaits the spirits of the dead, the ghosts cluster as thickly on these shores as the living do in downtown Manhattan during rush hour — wailing for a nurse to change filthy sheets, begging not to be whipped again, muttering about someday killing that one guard, or wondering tearfully whatever happened to a crudely amputated limb.

DESCRIPTION

You step off the boat onto a fog-shrouded shore. The wind moves only lightly, but soundlessly, in from over the water, slowly churning the mist. Faintly visible through the silvery vapor are hundreds or even thousands of grave markers, most in some kind of disrepair, whether

tagged with graffiti, shattered by vandals, or just gradually succumbing to the march of years. The ground is spongy with the chilling wetness in the air, and with the unimaginable vastness of the decay underfoot. No moon shines, and even the light from the city nearby seems muted. Sound seems to carry reluctantly, as though the world has lowered its voice to a mere whisper here.

In the distance, across a great sea of headstones, small glimpses of light are visible, and even the fog cannot completely silence the sound of a familiar voice raised in… anger? Exultation? Perhaps some combination of the two? Even as you draw closer, you can hear words unspoken since the days of the Nameless Empire, falling from the Roller’s lips, proclaiming pain and death upon his enemy, and glory to his own name. Through the swirling of the mists, a figure stands before the Shuankhsen, in opposition to the Lifeless monstrosity — an unremarkable-looking man, attired plainly — at the head of a throng of people, seemingly from all walks of life.

Calmly, with perhaps even a note of pity in his voice, the man facing down the Roller speaks, likewise in the Iremite tongue, “You are as far beyond hope as you are beyond reason. You have come here for a battle, and so you shall have it. May Ammut show you mercy, for Azar will not.”

STORYTELLER GOALS

This is the final showdown with the Roller, and the characters’ first opportunity to behold the Heretic. This should be a combat of epic proportions, with the meret able to contribute by strength of arms, keen tactics, force of personality, and mystical might. Every character has something to contribute, and all of them should have the opportunity to feel like heroes, fighting for a worthy cause.

CHARACTER GOALS

This is it. The characters are here to take down the Roller and to end his mad ambition. If they can, it’s also likely that they’ll want to destroy as many of his followers as possible, so that the threat he poses is ended not just in this lifetime, but for many lifetimes to come.

MENTAL ••• PHYSICAL ••• SOCIAL •••

Chapter Three