Chapter Six Sample - Means to the End (Patreon)

Means to the End

In addition to thinking about the fate your character might ultimately meet, consider what you hope for him to accomplish before he meets that end, as well as what you hope the cohort as a whole will achieve. The Storyteller (and other players) will have a say, of course, and the duration of the chronicle and the length of each game session also influence what can be achieved. Be sure to identify and discuss any outcomes that you’ll find unsatisfying or unacceptable.

Signifying Nothing

The death of a member of the cohort can come at any time and need not be narratively satisfying. Any confrontation with a few conspiracy goons that goes poorly could end in one or more of the Deviants bleeding out with no ambulance coming to the rescue. The Renegades can’t even be assured of getting their revenge on those most responsible for their suffering, much less have a hope of dismantling the Web of Pain. Life isn’t fair, and the lives of the Broken are even less so.

This makes for a bleak story, but the theme of Deviant is the revenge tragedy. The tale of characters bent on revenge, hampered by Scars, and faced with impossible odds will not necessarily end like a Hollywood blockbuster.

Notably, many stories with a traditional ending begin with story beats that look like this. The cohort’s first confrontations with their persecutors could end poorly for them. Some of them might even die to prove just how serious the situation is. You could volunteer to create a character whose sole purpose in the narrative is to die in a way that isn’t glamorous and doesn’t achieve anything other than steeling the resolve of the rest of the cohort — keeping your “real” character in your back pocket and bringing her out once that happens. For that matter, the entire troupe could work out some way to decide which of their characters have plot armor and which could die from falling off a roof after a dramatic failure on an Athletics roll.

One Small Victory

Individual Deviants will not meet their end without ensuring that they (or the cohort) accomplish something. The Renegade might save someone’s life — possibly a cohort member or Loyalty Touchstone (or several of them), but maybe just innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. They may take down or ensure the downfall of a Conviction Touchstone (theirs or a friend’s) or Linchpin, or neutralize an Icon or Node.

Most one-shots are going to adhere to this. There simply isn’t enough time for anything grander. But the players still understandably expect to walk away from the table having achieved something.

This is also probably the default for a high-lethality chronicle. It isn’t incompatible with a chronicle where the cohort achieves larger goals, either. A parade of Renegades could well feed themselves into the woodchipper, each sacrificing themself to advance the cause one more step. It makes for a brutal game unlikely to permit much time for deep engagement with the individual characters, but that can work in a chronicle that unfolds like a war story.

If the chronicle is meant to go this route, consider giving each character one hidden motivation or character-defining secret. This is meant to humanize them. Each player should seek an opportunity to reveal this before the Deviant’s demise.

Central Conspiracy

The character survives to see the destruction of the chronicle’s central conspiracy and is instrumental in its defeat. This can also make a good stopping point for a chronicle. The Renegades may have encountered or even come to blows with other conspiracies of the Web of Pain, but the chronicle doesn’t explore them in detail.

This is ideal for shorter chronicles. There isn’t enough time to unpeel layer after layer of the endless onion that is the Web of Pain. The cohort puts an end to their primary antagonist and rides into the credits.

Endless Conspiracies

No matter how many conspiracies the Renegades destroy, another one always fills the power vacuum. It might be the conspiracy behind the conspiracy, a rival conspiracy, or a new conspiracy born from the old conspiracy’s ashes. This isn’t to say that the fight is hopeless or isn’t worthwhile. Every victory is still a victory, after all. But there’s always more to do, and more enemies to fight.

This is the setting default for Deviant. Primarily, it conveys the limitless scale of the Web of Pain as a meta-antagonist. It quickly makes clear that the Renegades could spend their whole lives fighting the conspiracies and never put an end to the entire web. It also illustrates how quickly and easily Baselines form conspiracies around the Remade and shows how obsession with the Divergence can lead to the accretion of a vast organization bent on studying or harnessing it. Crucially, though, it gives a chronicle unlimited room to continue. The cycle of fight conspiracy, defeat conspiracy, find a new conspiracy to fight has no predefined end point. A troupe can carry out this cycle for as long as they want, no matter how long the chronicle stretches out — until they either settle on an end point or stop playing.

Despite it being the default chronicle and a component of the setting, it is not a requirement of any individual chronicle that the cohort find, fight, and destroy an endless parade of conspiracies, never making any headway. In truth, it is likely to become repetitive after a few cycles, so this is often a middle period in a long-running chronicle rather than the end point of any chronicle.

A Quiet Life

The character escapes the Web of Pain and enjoys a life free of constant conspiracy pursuit. Perhaps the cohort destroys the active conspiracy and manages to lie low enough that others don’t find them. Or maybe they take down two or three powerful conspiracies in such spectacular fashion that the remainder of the Web of Pain collectively determines that hunting the cohort is both futile and self-destructive. Regardless, the character somehow wins a second chance to live a (mostly) normal life.

Rule the World

The character becomes a leading figure in a conspiracy. He might join an existing conspiracy without losing his autonomy in the process. Perhaps they offer him a leadership role to woo him, or he seizes one using the Variations at his disposal. He might instead create a new conspiracy — possibly drawing together a group of like-minded Deviants and sympathetic Baselines (The Devoted Companion discusses this process in greater depth). Sadly, it might also mean he has been captured and turned by the conspiracy, or that he just got tired of the fight and surrendered.

This can represent the Renegade selling out (or, as he would characterize it, buying in), but it can be a more efficient way of fighting back against enemies in the Web of Pain. Although Deviant-led conspiracies certainly aren’t the norm, they aren’t unknown, either. In fact, they can offer many advantages to the Devoted, not the least of which is some serious firepower to ward off any rival conspiracies who come sniffing around looking for new Broken to press into service.

Burning the Web

The character is instrumental in dismantling the Web of Pain. Perhaps she replaces it with something else, renders it obsolete, or destroys it forever. This is probably an impossible goal without making significant changes to the setting assumptions of Deviant, but a clever troupe might find a way to pull it off despite that.

Cured!

Through some plot arc or another, the Deviant is genuinely cured of Divergence, the cracks in her soul sealed up and her Scars removed. This might come at the cost of losing her Variations, or the process that brings it about might leave those intact. It may even be a process she can reproduce, curing the Divergence in other Broken. This could land a telling blow on the Web of Pain or could represent a new stage of human evolution — one that troupes are welcome to explore in summary during an epilogue or at length with one or more separate stories.