The Storyteller wanted to try something different. He decided to run a WoD game set in America around 2055, after there had been yet another global world war. Keep in mind we were playing in the late nineties and he was the serious political/military history type.

America had seen a catastrophic nuclear war with China and had about 40 years to recover. Only a few major cities remained but they were beacons of technology. Their shielded spires rose miles into the sky, venting waste gasses away from the masses below. Surrounding the megalopolises were acres and acres of barren irradiated wastelands. The Technocracy, anointed by nuclear fire, had won the Ascension war, but even the fierce work of the Progenitors had barely regenerated the feeblest bits of wilderness outside the arcologies.

The culture was geographically inverted. The rich lived underground, safe in their wombs of cool earth and technological cocoons that shielded them from the harsh radioactive winds and the furious gaze of the killing sun, now free of the ozone layer. The poor underclass had to eke out a living at the very tops of the cityscape among decaying radioactive shielding, scrounging for shelter and food. Each citizen wore a dosimeter at their neck to check their daily radiation levels, and gangs went to war over government welfare shipments of sunblock, regardless if they were infused with UV absorbers or simply placebo. It was in this new age, around the dive bars and orphanages clustered in the upper habs, that Alice Westerly's tender years were spent.

>>17810401
>Technocracy wins
>Changeling the Dreaming

You sure you weren't playing a Mage the Ascension game instead?

>>17810452
That was due to the dynamic of our small WoD group. The Storyteller became an (angry) Mechanical Engineering major and we played this one off that turned into a campaign Changeling game in between the main Technocratic campaign that lasted about two years.

The Storyteller was big on cross overs.

>>17810445
A few more words about this world’s culture. On the battered western seaboard of North America, closest to the Pacific Rim, an extreme, idealized form of American nationalism was the norm.

And why shouldn’t American neo-nationalism be common? Data screens at every slick trans-tube, the stuttering circulatory system of the fragile arcologies, cast neon holograms of the Yangtze choking on its own ash or looped footage of the American 101st Cybernetic Airborne marching in lock step over the incinerated streets of Kashi and Shanghai. The crusted ancient intercoms that dotted the corners of the upper hive proclaimed that the American citizen had been finally liberated from fear now that the Red Communist Menace had been defeated utterly. The Battle Hymm of the Republic underscored hourly announcements about generous daily rations for the poor, radiation shielding for the downtrodden and clean cold water for the productive from unpolluted underground springs provided by the beneficent US Government.

>>17810484
Despite this drumbeat of propaganda, clearly engineered by the invisible hand of the New World Order, the Technocracy was not to blame for this fierce, borderline fanatical culture of the new America. At least, not fully.

The paradigm shift came when the legions of battle-scarred HIT MARKs and AI piloted power suits returned from the front. Somewhere along the line sentience became sapience, and the war machines looked at their meat soldier cousins, humans often so cybernetically enhanced due to injury or duty that the division between man and machine was cryptic at best, and said ‘The Red Dragon is dead. We want our rightful place in the fabric of this Great nation, One nation, Under God, indivisible with our fellow brothers in arms.’

The Technocrats as a whole were uncertain what to make of this. The extreme nationalism, was after all programmed into each of their warriors to enhance their combat efficacy. This show of independence, however...was an unexpected byproduct of the types of adaptive AI that had been critical to winning the war. Iteration X, unusually riven with internal debate attempted to warehouse their returning war machines but the robotic soldiers lobbied Congress and eventually won voting recognition and rights of identity by using the same arguments that Women's Suffrage did after the First World War. It appeared even Control could not fully predict the fallout of all of its actions. Or was this simply the next goal on the Timetable all along?

When we started the campaign, Alice was a survivor, a young teenager running a gang of girls (Twisted Sisters) in the upper habs, stealing money and salvaging outdated tech in the exposed spires by day and trading favors (such as bodyguarding or being a courier, no not sexual dear readers) with club and hostel owners by night for shelter, iodine tablets or cyberware repairs for her gang. The storyteller and I ruled that her 'experiences' had made her delusional and prone to hallucinations. On the other hand that very madness that fueled psychotic hyperviolent bursts (and her uncanny aptitude for knife work) made Alice the natural candidate for the enforcer-leader role of her little gang. Some stunted near crushed sense of empathy gave Alice a very primitive sense of human interactions: she understood loyalty but had no concept of friendship. She took care of her gang as if they were a pride of lions. She acquired food and protected the sick but her actions were always calculated and cold. As far as she was concerned, she was the alpha. That was until a greater predator entered the stage.

One of the questions the Storyteller wanted to explore was how would vampires, werewolves, mages, and changelings survive and adapt in a post-apocalyptic dystopia where the First and Second world countries had finally decided to take the gloves off and settle their ideological differences in a nuclear Ragnarok.

He rationalized that as the human population plummeted from war casualties, vampire society would be eviscerated. Likely, social structures like the Camarilla and the Sabbat would vanish or become irrelevant as the vampires themselves fought an increasingly frantic internal genocide as the resources of blood dwindled to a trickle. Vampires are canny creatures though, so any with at least a hundred years under their belt likely would have a chance to survive and 'recolonize' the new human population. And, if they had lived that long before the war, chances are they would cling to their old allegiances and habits to simply keep the Beast in check, if not purely for nostalgia for a 'simpler time'.

One evening at a club the girls had found for a night's lodging, some of Alice's girls were mingling with the young toughs present for a hit of Joy or companionship in the dive’s thin-walled alcoves. Alice never understood this desire for interaction. To her dependence on others was a weakness, quite often a fatal one. After all, she could be entertained at any moment by spire cats congealing from thin air and whispering to each other, grinning widely while white rabbits bounded across her vision, forever late. Then there was a scream. From the bathroom.

(So as a character note, I built Alice with Physical as primary, Mental as secondary and Social as a far far tertiary. I maxed out Strength at 5 dots to reflect her madness induced strength, and because the oWoD rules said Butcher Knife was Str+Melee. Dex was 4 or 5 and Stamina was 2. She was hardened from her upbringing but still a 14 year old. So physically she was a glass cannon which made her interesting tactically to play. For mental stats, I recall Intelligence was a 3-4 and Wits were a solid 4. She could react -very- fast. Socially I think Charisma and Appearance were 2 and I remember putting Manipulation as a 1. This wasn't min/maxing. I wanted to reflect the fact she was a borderline feral child and could be very easily manipulated because she was so naive. Her only real mode of expression was violence. At least it was at the beginning. Or maybe Charisma was 1. Anyway back to the story)

Recognizing the scream of her gang-sister (quite curious), Alice rushed into flophouse bathroom...and saw a young man pressing her sister into the wall. That wasn't unusual. Not even the blood streaming down the girl's throat, down the wall and swirling around the drain. No. What was unusual is that her sister had dropped her switchblade. She had been overpowered. And then there was the quandary of another formerly vaguely handsome street tough kneeling over the crimson stream as it circled into a drain. Lapping at it with his tongue. Like a dog.

The street tough at her sister's throat turned a sanguine smeared smile to her.

That’s when the real screaming began. Sounds of all of her sisters in the room behind her.

'Cold..so very cold..' Alice thought as she writhed feebly against the hot pokers that pierced her skin. She felt her heart slow and far off a clock chime thirteen as the Mad Hatter went off muttering to wind his timepiece. "Monsters!" she thought, "what could they be...why would they come for her...what's happening?"

Perhaps there was a childhood memory of a well-loved bedtime story. A story which began with a veil of tears, a turtle and roses white and crimson. Perhaps the black and white tiles looked too much like a chessboard, overrun with rivers of red.

But then, she heard it. The voice of her enemy. A hiss, a whisper, a proclamation: 'Off with her head'.

>>17810789

Her eyes flashed open, a startlingly brilliant uncanny green, as she suddenly saw in vibrant colors her Wonderland all around her. And suddenly things became perfectly clear as cracked crystal. She knew what these monsters were. How could she not? Stealing Heart's blood, they must be, could ONLY the Card Guards of Hearts. Sent by the Red Bishop himself to kill her subjects and curry favor with the Red Queen, no doubt. For she KNEW she was rightful Queen of Wonderland. And for the minions of this Usurper, there would be hell to pay.

Rage boiled through her and the unearthly radiance of the Dreaming exploded from the madwoman as Alice shattered her Chrysalis, becoming a full Changeling in that bloody instant. The stress of her near conversion into a vampire pushed her over the edge of fantasy and madness as she threw off the shocked Sabbat pack member and tore from the Dreaming an Artifact: a long beautiful butcher's knife, a manifestation of her pure will. "Would not could not would not could not WILL NOT join the DANCE" she roared at the thunderstruck undead.

And yes, the vorpal blade went snicker-snack.

So that was Alice's origin story. Mechanically Alice realized she was a Changeling (ie experienced a Chrysalis) at the moment when a vampire pack were about to drain her dry. Since Chrysalis's happen during a time of extreme stress I figured that was a good way to go and the Storyteller rolled with it. Later adventures expanded on interaction with vampires (good and bad), exploring why the vampire pack was trying to convert her to a vampire (storyteller came up with a reason) and who the Red Bishop was.

I picked as a background a 5 point artifact, her Vorpal blade. I stayed pretty close to the video game, so I requested that the weapon be capable of aggravated damage and it was something she could call into reality from the dreaming. In addition it could never leave her side and it would return to her hand if she threw it. I added the latter partially because the Storyteller had a tenancy to throw my characters into dangerous situations where they were underequipped or low on resources to ratchet up the tension.

If /tg/ is interested I can tell more stories later of what I can remember. Including:

Hunting the Red Bishop (I took the Enemy flaw and the Storyteller used it brilliantly. Features the Mad Hatter)

The Mindbender and the Starwalker (a story of Americana and Therapy)

The White Knight (Corporations and Vampires)

Finding the Caterpillar

Slaying the Red Bishop

Alice: A Portrait of a Young Woman (Alice ... well, grew up. It ended logically and was pretty satisfying. The character went through several life changes).

>>17810963
I came.
>>17811118
Pleeeeease?

>>17811118
I'd like to hear them all, so start with the earliest or your favourate I guess.

All of my internets to you OP. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks gents and catgirls. Feedback certainly motivates me to keep writing. I'll see if I can piece together enough memories to post again next week sometime.

>>17813829
>Next week
Aw, shit. Cmon man, give me a little bit more.

Requesting archive for interesting CtD storytime?

indeed someone please archive this!