White Wolf's World of Darkness

[OctarineShrike]

I doubt it. This isn't, "A book about crossovers." it is however "A specific chronicle that's crossover focused."
Besides, nWoD stuff is already fairly easy to do crossover with. (Mages are likely to run roughshod over everyone else, especially any particularly powerful ones, but such is the difference in power and ability between a mage and basically everyone else.)

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I guess it's a question of what's in this chapter. I know mechanically speaking crossovers are supposed to be easy and Demons/Mummies/Mages Curbstomp everyone else but what about worldbuilding implications (How might the existence of Y effect Culture X, and what if you add Culture Z to the mix?) and areas of thematic overlap worth considering?

Chapters include:

• The Sworn and the False - Your playable factions in the Contagion Chronicle
• The Vectors - Powers available to the Sworn and False
• Plagues, Interstitial and Otherwise - A history of Contagion and how the different factions formed
• Storytelling - Thorough, accessible advice on running your crossover chronicles
• Five chapters of Contagious fiction
• Outbreak Sites - A rich campaign setting spanning all seven continents and providing 12 different playable settings from Odense to Edinburgh, San Francisco to New Zealand, and Kyoto to Antarctica

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Like... I don't know, I did some thinking about potential themes for a Mage/Demon/Geist/Changeling/Deviant fused world and this is what I came up with. Maybe it's combinatorial hell/unlikely but I'm still curious if they have any advice on this sort of thing.

1. Gnosticism(The God Machine, The Exarchs, etc.)

2. The Oppressive and hidden systems of the world/Fighting the Power(God Machine Infrastructure oppresses people. The Geist 2e underworld is hungry/unpleasant/oppressive. The Seers/Exarchs are oppressive. The Summer Court likes to take the fight to the Fae, and most Deviants want revenge)

3. People as Commodities/Self Determination(You've got conspiracies abducting people to make deviants, the True Fae abducting people, the Seers trying to make the world dehumanizing and the God Machine's Infrastructure helping the process(Edit: Extending on this, you've got reapers abducting ghosts to the underworld and I've heard people who worked out how to eat ghosts may be one of the antagonists in Geist 2e.))

4. Rampant weird technology(The God Machine Exists, Deviants can make themselves Deviants accidentally)

5. The world is as beautiful as it is terrifying(Changeling is part of the setting so there should be some beauty in the world in spite of the terror to fit with thematics)

6. Pervasive Symbolism/Secrets within secrets(Mage and the World of Darkness in general)
7. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing(Mage and the World of Darkness in general)
8. The World is Fucking Weird, seek it and it will find you(The World of Darkness in general, combined with my fondness for Welcome to Nightvale)

9. Moral Compromise(Demons, However far Deviants are willing to go for revenge, the Guardians of the Veil being necessary evils so nobody else gets sullied, the corrupting influence of power in general in the setting)
10. No one is in Control(I liked Welcome to Nightvale with its systems of things that just happen with no apparent input from anybody and it seemed like a reasonably respectful way to look at a fused world, Moloch is probably even worse in the World of Darkness, the interplay of the Seers/God Machine/Wyrd leads to something surreal)

11. Dread/Paranoia(The Seers, the God Machine, The Fae, the world in general)
12. Being Supernatural can be a very isolating experience(A sizable chunk of the supernatural community sees things nobody else does and is hunted by somebody, Changelings and Demons have significant trust issues)

13. Cults(Geist has cults, Deviant conspiracies can be cults, Demons can have cults, Mage organizations sponsor cults as fronts if I remember right.)

14. Body Snatchers(Fetches and Demonic Covers)

 

[OctarineShrike]

I apologize for the doublepost, but you may want to check your backerkit if you backed or preordered Geist 2e, the PDF has gone out.

Edit: Tangentially, while the Contagion Chronicle does provide contagion neutral crossover advice, it does not go into things like crossover worldbuilding.

 

[Nervaqus987]

Recently, I've been pondering ideas about alternate ways to lower your Generation in VtM and how they might work.

The first thing I wanted to lay as a ground rule is that diablerie should be the easiest and the only way to permanently and intrinsically decrease Generation. Other methods are temporary or can be disrupted.

So far, I've got three ideas for decreasing Generation.

The first is the Ritual of Long Sleep. A vampire goes into torpor for decades or centuries(leaning more to centuries) on purpose to slowly gather power. When they awaken, they've got a great deal of power, but once they use that power it's gone. The more they use their power, the faster it runs out until they return to their natural Generation. The only way to regain it is either to go back into torpor for centuries or to enact a different ritual.

This one, I feel is more appropriate to NPCs. The PCs might be protecting such an Elder in his sleep, or more likely hunting him down to keep him from awakening. An active one would probably want to use the threat of their power more than their actual power. Anything they spend is something they can't get back, so they'll want to save their power as much as possible. When dealing with an Elder like this, I think that PCs would want to divert and distract them. Ideally, you want to force the Elder to expend his power against something that isn't your delicate face and preferably on your political enemies and then dealing with an Elder that's been weakened to your level, or at least near it. When working with them, you can charge more for your services than you'd be able to with an Elder who's natively at that level of Generation. You wanna strike the balance between fleecing them for all they're worth and pissing them off so much they decide to just accept the loss of power.

Of course, the Elder is also aware of what you're doing, so the usual dancing comes into play.

The second is the Ritual of Blood Gorging, which could probably use a better name. In this one, a Vampire drinks blood in excess of their blood pool basically bloats with power. I'm trying to work out the exact numbers for this one, but in general I was thinking something along the lines of fully draining a dozen or so people to go from 12 to 11 and for the cost to escalate as you keep climbing the chart. Again, something more for an NPC(probably Sabbat, at that) than a PC.

Well, unless you pull off some kind of crazy blood drive scheme or something. It might be feasible to pull off if you've got a big blood cult or maybe in some kind of historical game set in the Aztec Empire or during the Spanish conquest thereof. It's also not quite as gameable as Long Sleep, on either end, but I mention it because well......it's kinda obvious? Also the first one I came up with. "How should a vampire power up? DRINK LOTS OF BLOOD!"

The third one that I came up with the the Ritual of Spirit's Blood. This name could also probably use some workshopping. The basic premise is for the vampire to find a powerful spirit and either make a pact with it for its blood or else subdue it and bind it somewhere. My first thought would be the vampire would bind it inside his body, but keeping one locked in your basement that someone can stumble on and unleash also makes sense. You'd probably have to grab a fairly powerful spirit to actually lower Generation and a more appropriate spirit probably helps. A Bane related to bloodshed is probably a lot more viable than a servant of Helios, for example.

This one's also a fair bit more PC friendly than Long Sleep or Blood Gorging. I'm not terribly familiar with how spirits work in oWoD as opposed to nWoD, but the way it'd work is that the primary benefit is the lowering of Generation, rather than the vampire getting access to spirit powers. In return, aside from whatever pact the vampire has to keep, I would think they also pick up additional weaknesses based on the spirit. Certain types of material cause Agg damage to the vampire, having to roll to resist behavior associated with their spirit, and frenzy when they run into their spirit's bane.

NPCs using it are likely to be more inhuman than usual and have weird idiosyncrasies. PCs would have to work around that and if planning on confronting the Elder in question would need to work out what Spirit they're drawing their power from and how. That could be done by researching their behaviors and what new weaknesses they've picked up and other clues to try and figure out the spirit. Then they'd need to work out how to disrupt things, either by say preventing the vampire from making the required offerings to his patron spirit or letting it out of the basement. Either of which are likely to have fairly severe consequences.


So, thoughts? Opinions? Other methods? "Nervaqus, quit being an idiot!"

 

[Murderhobo of Nod]

There's slight issue with blood banes (which would probably be their best bet at this kind of power play), they run serious risk of loosing control to the bane that's in its element and possibly falling thrall to it. Especially if its supposedly more powerful then kindred its obligating.

Edit: I need read more deeply....

 

[Gnarker]

The second is the Ritual of Blood Gorging, which could probably use a better name. In this one, a Vampire drinks blood in excess of their blood pool basically bloats with power. I'm trying to work out the exact numbers for this one, but in general I was thinking something along the lines of fully draining a dozen or so people to go from 12 to 11 and for the cost to escalate as you keep climbing the chart.

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(16 - your previous Generation) squared for each step? So you get sixteen people for going from 12 to 11, twenty-five for 11 to 10, thirty-six for 10 to 9, and so on until two-hundred and twenty-five to go from 2 to 1.
Or maybe something even steeper, like (14 - previous Generation) cubed per step, or even to the power of four, so you need to drain literally thousands of people at once to reach Generation 1 (specifically, 1.728 and 20.736 respectively for the cube and power of four, though you might want to round that instead to two respectively twenty thousand).

Thousands of people sounds like the right ballpark for being difficult enough to capture and hold at once, and for being likely enough to be discovered and then retaliated for by all sorts of pissed-off people, from rivals to major hunter conspiracies, that wether to take that last step would be a serious consideration.
As well, a quick skim of wikipedia says that the very largest Aztec celebrations contained anywhere between four and eigthy thousand people sacrificed at once, so that seems about right too.

 

[AshenFox]

I guess it's a question of what's in this chapter. I know mechanically speaking crossovers are supposed to be easy and Demons/Mummies/Mages Curbstomp everyone else but what about worldbuilding implications (How might the existence of Y effect Culture X, and what if you add Culture Z to the mix?) and areas of thematic overlap worth considering?

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How might Y effect Culture X? I mean, Dark Ears calls half the things that exist Yokai. The same section, Fallen Blossoms on Page 304, talks about Tengu and goes into how descriptions and just WHAT they even are (Shinto gods? The ghosts of dead spirits? Demons?) are all over the place. It is again in Dark Eras (iirc) that Vampires come up and are discussed as "one day they'll all say they're the same" but distinctly talks through implication but not direct names of each clan rising in different places across the world.

And if we zoom out to the true highest levels we can observe, like when we sit at the highest levels of oWoD and talk about how the Technocracy is the same as the mages they hunt because all of humanity are basically sleeping omnipotent gods playing a giant LARP game, the truth starts to come into extremely sharp focus.

Reality is a fucking mess of contradictory ideas and things, with patterns resonating through reality like a demented fractal pattern repeated through time and space.
And a huge majority of that is all on the Mages, because they fought a war for control of reality and did massive damage to it, and in the end there's no answers to who won, or if anyone even did. But every so often one of them decides they're going to try to get back to the Supernal, and of those every so often people a fraction do, and when they do they have this nasty tendency to fuck up reality in the process. Like, say, overwriting a major religion with another one from the past which leads to the religion now having a bunch of weird funky things going on with it that seem to cause it to contradict itself a lot. Oops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, thoughts? Opinions? Other methods? "Nervaqus, quit being an idiot!"

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That this sound like a very bad idea as generation is very much SUPPOSED to be something that you can't just go messing around with.
If anyone can just go to sleep for a while and become an Antediluvian (or MORE) for a day then a huge portion would be dirt napping.
Likewise if all it takes is a giant orgy of blood and feeding to become an Antediluvian, do you REALLY think that there wouldn't be a FUCK TON more of them running around literally turning the world into an even bigger orgy of blood and death all in the pursuit of trying to become the new Cain or even more?

If you want to try to climb the generation ladder, you're going to have to eat another vampire and hope they aren't strong enough to instead take YOU over.
If all it takes is eating mortals, there would be plenty of gen 2 vampires running around.

 

[OctarineShrike]

How might Y effect Culture X? I mean, Dark Ears calls half the things that exist Yokai. The same section, Fallen Blossoms on Page 304, talks about Tengu and goes into how descriptions and just WHAT they even are (Shinto gods? The ghosts of dead spirits? Demons?) are all over the place. It is again in Dark Eras (iirc) that Vampires come up and are discussed as "one day they'll all say they're the same" but distinctly talks through implication but not direct names of each clan rising in different places across the world.

And if we zoom out to the true highest levels we can observe, like when we sit at the highest levels of oWoD and talk about how the Technocracy is the same as the mages they hunt because all of humanity are basically sleeping omnipotent gods playing a giant LARP game, the truth starts to come into extremely sharp focus.

Reality is a fucking mess of contradictory ideas and things, with patterns resonating through reality like a demented fractal pattern repeated through time and space.
And a huge majority of that is all on the Mages, because they fought a war for control of reality and did massive damage to it, and in the end there's no answers to who won, or if anyone even did. But every so often one of them decides they're going to try to get back to the Supernal, and of those every so often people a fraction do, and when they do they have this nasty tendency to fuck up reality in the process. Like, say, overwriting a major religion with another one from the past which leads to the religion now having a bunch of weird funky things going on with it that seem to cause it to contradict itself a lot. Oops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Were you referring to supernatural or mundane cultures with that bit on Dark Eras? I was referring to adding other splats to a game world. The effect of Vampires on Mage Society, the effect of Werewolves on Sin-Eater society, etc. Fair point about the Mages, that is a very good reason for reality to be farking weird and to not worry so much about how things fit together.

 

[The Laurent]

​

 

[Renu]

Yeaaaaaah, given people would get to the box before the sink, I wouldn't touch it, goblins or no goblins.

 

[mothematics]

So as my Discord buddies now all know after my screeching about my copy of the PDF, Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2e is fucking rad and I think possibly even better than C:tL 2e. It's amazing, genuinely. I can't wait to play it.

 

[OctarineShrike]

As another person who's been going through it but doesn't speak White Wolf/Onyx Path on the same level and knows the complaints people had about thematic incoherency and exponential growth from key/manifestation combinations, those have been adjusted.

Geist 2e is firmly focused on Ghost Activism and includes rules for organization scale actions. You help ghosts resolve their anchors and let them go beyond even the Underworld. You protect them from the reaper ghosts seeking to drag them to the hungry underworld below, Necromancers(misinformed or otherwise), people who figured out how to eat ghosts for power, less ethical Krewes trying to exploit them, and if you're lucky, your Krewe will build up enough mojo to be able to challenge the Underworld itself. If you succeed, the hungry, darwinistic hellscape of the underworld will be turned into something more benign and in keeping with your Krewe's values. Fail and you become another Dead Dominion in the depths. A lot of Krewes have tried this, and there's an entire Krewe archetype(Undertakers) that tries to dissect previous attempts at transforming the underworld and how they went wrong.

Keys are now superchargers at a cost for abilities. No unique effects for every combination. You start out with two and need to resort to ghost cannibalism, tanking your synergy, to get more inherent keys you can use. Otherwise you need Mementos for more keys.

 

[BossFight]

So as my Discord buddies now all know after my screeching about my copy of the PDF, Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2e is fucking rad and I think possibly even better than C:tL 2e. It's amazing, genuinely. I can't wait to play it.

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Sounds interesting. What books would I need to look at this? Just core 2e or is 1e knowledge required?

 

[OctarineShrike]

Sounds interesting. What books would I need to look at this? Just core 2e or is 1e knowledge required?

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Just the 2e PDF on backerkit. The developers are currently soliciting errata before final release and you should get a code for the proofing copy if you preorder.

Edit/Disclaimer: I am not sure of this, though. Whether or not the codes were given to anybody who preordered before they started sending links out(That's what I did), or if preordering now will get you one.

 

[mothematics]

Sounds interesting. What books would I need to look at this? Just core 2e or is 1e knowledge required?

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What Conjured Blade said. Much like Changeling 2e you only need the book itself.

 

[AshenFox]

Were you referring to supernatural or mundane cultures with that bit on Dark Eras? I was referring to adding other splats to a game world. The effect of Vampires on Mage Society, the effect of Werewolves on Sin-Eater society, etc. Fair point about the Mages, that is a very good reason for reality to be farking weird and to not worry so much about how things fit together.

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I was referring to it all, in general. Falling Blossoms in particular is Hunter focused, so that colors things somewhat with regards to that particular thing.
However something else to note is in Requiem, Forsaken, Awakening, and Promethean 2E all have sections on Toyko. (I'll note I find it strange that Lost 2E didn't get one, unless I'm just blind or something.)

But each one of those has a section on Tokyo which shows that even with all of them running around, most of the time each Supernatural is running around without much contact with others, though some crossover does happen. For example, Uratha are highly disorganized and most don't buy or possibly even know the Father Wolf mythos, instead mostly passing around the tale of Retaruseta Kamuy. A white wolf god that used his divine power to howl for a wife to come to him, so one rowed from across the sea and came to him, and from him the Ainu people were born. As well statistically in the past the Uratha only really cropped up in those with blood from native Ainu people. In their Tokyo section there's these weird 'Tengu' who nest on Loci and look like owls made of smoke and shadow with coal red eyes. Which totally doesn't at all sound like a Strix, which the Kindred of Tokyo have also spotted but are not currently having big issues with, at all. Moving onto Mages they're all wrapped up in their own obsessions with one major crossover, the Ansho. These weird magical dead zones that have existed since 1640s at least as they're also referenced in Falling Blossoms. Ansho show up at a rate of 3-5 per year and vanish randomly at a rate of 1-3 per year, meaning their numbers are steadily growing, and they not only stop the Awakened from casting spells, as of the modern era they wear down magic that's active as well. In addition as per Falling Blossoms, ANY power that requires you to spend Willpower also can't be activated inside an Ansho. Finally whenever a mage releases Paradox it sends out a "beacon" signal out to 10 yards per Gnosis plus 10 yards per success on the Paradox dice pool (which must be successful for the effect to go off), sensed by all splats (vampire, werewolf, changeling, etc.), any of their lesser template types that have a supernatural merit, or anyone with a supernatural merit. They don't know who did what they just know something is 'off' in that direction. Though curiously the Ansho also block this "beacon" effect.

As it is most supernatural groups are somewhat disconnected for many reasons, not the least of which being Hunters, Rivals, Werewolves (Iron Masters as of 2E specifically hunt other supernaturals which tend to cluster around humans), the God Machine, etc. So in the end how any given group or organization or what not is going to bounce off one another is very much a case of 'what your storyteller calls for' or 'what you all cause'.

However, we do have another setting that gives some ideas of potential crossover interactions. Rome. In the Dark Eras Companion there's Forsaken by Rome which is a Werewolf focused historical setting revolving around Rome and the Roman Empire around 9 to 12 CE. As we also have Requiem for Rome we know that Vampires were also a major force in Rome right up until the Strix came. So, what does Forsaken by Rome have to say about Vampires?

The population of Chronicles of Darkness consists of more than just werewolves, and ancient Rome is no exception. Vampires in Forsaken by Rome are considered to be the "descendants" of Remus, and largely have an agreement with the Wolf-Blooded to police their own, keep to themselves, and not endanger the common good. For more information, the Vampire: The Requiem sourcebook Requiem for Rome contains more information about mortis in Roma.

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Hell if you really want a lot of info just about every single Era from Dark Eras has a section that's basically, "So, this is all mostly focused on X... what about all the other major supernaturals?" Forsaken by Rome's thing specifically mentions Vampires, Sin-Eaters, Prometheans, Mummies, Hunters, Demons, and Beast.

Fail and you become another Dead Dominion in the depths.

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This.... actually explains a HELL of a lot about the Underworld, but it also leads me to a fundamental question.
In the information we have about the Underworld there are some Dread Dominions that aren't really seen anymore, some of which are also basically abandoned (if I remember correctly, as I'm currently running a mixed supernaturals game and one player wants to go Sin-Eater plus some others have NPCs with Underworld adjacent backgrounds so I've been doing lots of rereading to refresh my knowledge).

So the question becomes, why are those ones in particular less seen or even outright 'abandoned'?

Edit: Fixed a couple of spelling errors I only just realized I made. My punishment for trying to write that soon after waking up.

 

[OctarineShrike]

This.... actually explains a HELL of a lot about the Underworld, but it also leads me to a fundamental question.
In the information we have about the Underworld there are some Dread Dominions that aren't really seen anymore, some of which are also basically abandoned (if I remember correctly, as I'm currently running a mixed supernaturals game and one player wants to go Sin-Eater plus some others have NPCs with Underworld adjacent backgrounds so I've been doing lots of rereading to refresh my knowledge).

So the question becomes, why are those ones in particular less seen or even outright 'abandoned'?

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Dominions aren't eternal and eventually get consumed by the ocean of fragments.

 

[Shane_357]

-snip-

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I really despise The Wolf And The Raven, mostly because of it's absolute focus on the Vikings.
"What's that, you want to know what kind of opposition they're facing from the Irish/Saxon splats? Haha, fuck you."
Only info on the Viking splats, as far as I can tell, the book doesn't mention any form of native supernatural forces at all.

 

[AshenFox]

Dominions aren't eternal and eventually get consumed by the ocean of fragments.

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Interesting.
The Sea consumes all eventually it would seem.

I really despise The Wolf And The Raven, mostly because of it's absolute focus on the Vikings.
"What's that, you want to know what kind of opposition they're facing from the Irish/Saxon splats? Haha, fuck you."
Only info on the Viking splats, as far as I can tell, the book doesn't mention any form of native supernatural forces at all.

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I'll admit I never actually looked at The Wolf And The Raven except to look for the "what about others" section.
I honestly can't care about Viking werewolves (beyond any cool new powers I can then use for my own stuff), and I've been extremely hesitant to care about anything that hasn't gotten a 2E released yet as well, given that some of the 2E stuff has profound effects on the game from my perspective.

Like the various realms in the Underworld being failed attempts to fix the Underworld very much influences a LOT of some things.
Also makes my Radioactive Hellscape domain take on an interesting context. Though hopefully Geist 2E will actually have a decent portion of Underworld stuff in it if part of the 'end goal' is to potentially attempt to fix it, because otherwise it's going to be a really annoying thing to wait 20 years to get Book of the Dead 2E.

 

[OctarineShrike]

Interesting.
The Sea consumes all eventually it would seem.


I'll admit I never actually looked at The Wolf And The Raven except to look for the "what about others" section.
I honestly can't care about Viking werewolves (beyond any cool new powers I can then use for my own stuff), and I've been extremely hesitant to care about anything that hasn't gotten a 2E released yet as well, given that some of the 2E stuff has profound effects on the game from my perspective.

Like the various realms in the Underworld being failed attempts to fix the Underworld very much influences a LOT of some things.
Also makes my Radioactive Hellscape domain take on an interesting context. Though hopefully Geist 2E will actually have a decent portion of Underworld stuff in it if part of the 'end goal' is to potentially attempt to fix it, because otherwise it's going to be a really annoying thing to wait 20 years to get Book of the Dead 2E.

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I'd say there's a decent amount of material, between sample dominions(Ghosts living in a dominion aren't subject to underworld essence drain and getting absorbed if they run out but they're subject to Old Laws and Kereberoi in exchange), a list of some rivers, the Reapers that bring ghosts below by force, the river cities where ghosts fight over the essence containing memory trash washed down there to not get absorbed, the Leviathan and Admiral get mentioned, etc.

Geists are now ghosts that drank from the ocean of fragments to escape essence drain, becoming more and less than what they were.

 

[AshenFox]

I'd say there's a decent amount of material, between sample dominions(Ghosts living in a dominion aren't subject to underworld essence drain and getting absorbed if they run out but they're subject to Old Laws and Kereberoi in exchange), a list of some rivers, the Reapers that bring ghosts below by force, the river cities where ghosts fight over the essence containing memory trash washed down there to not get absorbed, the Leviathan and Admiral get mentioned, etc.

Geists are now ghosts that drank from the ocean of fragments to escape essence drain, becoming more and less than what they were.

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I look forward to actually being able to read more once it's finally out in 2077.

 

[OctarineShrike]

Last 48 hrs for the Contagion Chronicle Kickstarter. OWOD style intersplat Gonzo organizations, contagion-neutral crossover advice(focused more on crossover groups than crossover wprldbuilding), the Santiago chapter gives a preview of what a Deviant the Renegades conspiracy looks like, there's a book about crossover mechanical interactions as a scaling stretch goal in addition to more city write ups, and if you wanted a discount on Dark Eras or Demon the Descent(25 each on Drivethrurpg), you can get them as 15 dollar add-ons.

Plus there's the actual contagion stuff if you think that's more interesting than I do, so if any of that caught your interest you may want to get in on this. The manuscript previews are basically all up.

 

[Leliel]

Antarctica preview is up, as well as what the Contagion is like in its base form.

Which is to say "The Thing as a movie was too limited in special effects and imagination, we're mixing in Clive Barker's Doom into it!"

The book is worth getting to have the Carriers as antagonists, is what I'm saying.

 

[AshenFox]

Which is to say "The Thing

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Oh, so it's a Chronicle that you've already lost and now you just get to suffer before you die.
Like the Forsaken Chronicle's Guide alt setting where you couldn't even enter the Shadow, spirits are just doing whatever they want, and the pure are somewhere between obliterated and Black Spiral Dancers. Only with even less hope.

 

[Leliel]

Oh, so it's a Chronicle that you've already lost and now you just get to suffer before you die.
Like the Forsaken Chronicle's Guide alt setting where you couldn't even enter the Shadow, spirits are just doing whatever they want, and the pure are somewhere between obliterated and Black Spiral Dancers. Only with even less hope.

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I have no idea if you are serious or not.

If you are, thankfully every writer in 2E still there has realized true cosmic horror is boring, for the same reason most CoC writers did.

Truth is, Carriers aren't Things. They have Thing-like appearances and powers, but they're honestly kind of pitiable. From what anyone can tell, they're what's left of humans after the Contagion eats part of their alternate worlds and repurposes them as pathogen delivery systems. Thing is, people know this, because they can remember being human, and dearly missing it; even when they've adapted and created human flesh-suits, they are ravaged by illness and never quite able to ignore the overwhelming hunger the Contagion instills in them. In fact, it's common that their universal empty eye-sockets are filled with fungus, which is exactly as pleasant as it sounds. The example infiltrator even comes off as someone who desperately wants someone to save her from her own powers.

Unfortunately, while they can't turn humans into other Carriers, they are highly virulent, and the Contagion instills an instinct in them to spread it. You will be able save your buddy, but a Carrier with an access to water supply and no desire to hold back is a pandemic on two-to-four legs. The Carriers escaping Antarctica is just as much of a threat as the Thing is, if not more so, because they fuck with the world itself in the process.

 

[AshenFox]

I have no idea if you are serious or not.

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I would think it would have been obvious.
I'll see the actual stuff when it gets released sometime in 2052.

Until then all I've got is what people with access say, and you're the first and your first statement references The Thing which while indeed very horror and as such very in keeping with WoD, is somewhat worrying because The Thing is basically bio Grey Goo or bio Strange Matter. It's fine for the contained horror scenario within which it exists, but the second it escapes from that box your options for everything not spiraling completely out of control and into the kind of 'there is no hope' realms that stuff like CthulhuTech ran headlong into are best represented by a number just shy of negative infinity. Which you confirm is, in fact, true. Which means that the most I'm going to get from this when it does some out is probably like one or two tidbits maybe, and then the rest I'm going to just have to kick into the pit where we keep the other horrible things. Like Gypsies, Changing Breeds, or Beast.