02 Carnival of Machines.pdf

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A CREEPY CASE OF MECHANICAL DESIRES AND KILLER RIDES
CARNIVAL OF MACHINES
A CITY OF MIST CASE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Background
The Iceberg
Depth 0: The Hooks
Interested Parties
Depth 1: Downtown Disaster
Depth 2: A Well-Oiled Mechanism
Depth 3: Such A Fun Way To Die
Depth 4: What Makes Folks Tick
Aftermath
4
6
6
7
9
12
15
21
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HOW TO USE THIS CASE IN YOUR GAME
You can use
Carnival of Machines
as a standalone one-
shot or as a part of the
Nights of Payne Town
story arc.
Within
Nights of Payne Town,
this case is the second of
three cases that form the Personal Vein. It is preceded
by
Killing Her Softly
and followed by
Broken Glass.
Throughout this PDF,
red clues
(clues given in red
cards) point the investigation to another case in the
Personal Vein or in the
Nights of Payne Town
story
arc. Reveal them to your players only if and when
you wish to lead the story to the given case.
CREDITS
CONTENT WARNING
This game contains mild language as well as strong
themes of violence, crime, and immorality. It does
NOT contain explicit representation of sexual acts.
Parental guidance is advised.
Writing, Game Design, and Production: Amit Moshe
Assistant Game Producer: Omer Shapira
Editing: Eran Aviram
Proofreading: Marshal Oppel
Art: Marcin Sobon, Mariusz Szulc
Graphic Design: Manuel Serra Sáez,
Giovanna De Filippis
Contributors: Matt Brown.
The production of this game was made possible
thanks to our Kickstarter backers. Thank you all!
© 2019 Son of Oak Game Studio / Amít Moshe
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.CITYOFMIST.CO
When a Rift love triangle ends in a
tragic car crash at a Downtown junction,
the crew must trace the chain of events
back to its source. Was this just another
sad story, so common in this City,
or did a guiding hand have a part in
this? The more they learn, the more
the crew members sense that they are
being led down a path from which they
can’t escape, towards the same end
as the victims of the crime they are
investigating.
Carnival of Machines
starts out as a neo-noir murder
investigation but pivots mid-case into a classic comic
book “death trap” scheme. In its investigation-heavy,
moody first half, the crew unfolds the personal mis-
fortune of three Rifts whose Mythoi caused them to
become involved with one another. In the second half
of the case, the crew reveals the scheme behind the
tragedies and must survive a creepy, forsaken, and
boobytrapped funfare, designed solely to kill them and
those like them. The case also features an NPC on a
crash course, Goldie, whose fate is determined by the
PCs actions.
In his darkest hour, Drake sought the help of what he
referred to as a “brain mechanic”: the psychiatrist
Ar-
chibald Tennant,
a member of
Mending the Broken
(see
Broken Glass).
The psychiatrist seized the opportu-
nity and poisoned Drake’s mind, stoking his obsession
with understanding through logic and empowering
him to regain control over his life “by
eliminating
the
unpredictable variables in the equation”. For Drake,
those unpredictable variables are the wielders of leg-
endary powers: Rifts, whose ‘magic’ he both mocks and
detests. Drake sidelines his own Rifthood, convincing
himself his powers are a form of intellectual evolution,
capable of bringing order to a chaotic world.
Name:
background
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THE CARNIVAL
As an expert engineer, Drake applied his genius to
studying and deconstructing Rifts. Researching folk-
lore and comparative myths, he was able to discover
the patterns that govern legends. He came to under-
stand the logic in Rifts’ powers, and most importantly,
the driving force of their legend. Based on this knowl-
edge, he surmised that
Rifts can’t help but follow
their Mythos,
and devised a plan based on this law: to
build a fairytale fairground that will attract Rifts into
customized death traps that will kill them when they
take the mythic bait.
To that end, he teamed up with an impoverished trav-
eling carnival set up just outside town, the
Lemnos
Carnival,
and its members, who refer to themselves as
“Carnies” (the Sintians, a folk of plunderers who tend-
ed to Hephaestus after his fall from Olympus). Touched
by Drake’s Mythos, the Lemnos Carnies accepted him
as their messiah and worshipped him as a god, and he
gifted them the uncanny science that would bring their
funfair devices and mannequins to life.
To help him collect information on potential Rift
targets, Drake hired
P.I. Chuck Holliday
(Sleeper) and
equipped him with a camera with a lens that can see
through the Mist. He sent the private investigator to
find and profile Rifts for him. He then used his Carnies
and their lifelike mannequins to lure hapless targets
into the death trap fairground.
Drake’s hypothesis turned out to be true. Fascinated
with Rifts’ nearly-mechanic, predictable behavior,
Drake devised traps for each victim, deriving a twist-
ed sense of control and pleasure out of the victory of
science and logic over his legendary prey. He killed
as many as a dozen Rifts before P.I. Holliday sent
him three profiles of interconnected Rifts (and one
Sleeper), who posed an interesting jigsaw for Drake’s
intellect to solve.
MECHANISM n. The philosophical doctrine that all natu-
ral phenomena, including life and thought, allow mechan-
ical explanation by physics and chemistry.
THE MECHANIST
Maximilian Drake
used to think he had the capability
to understand anything. For him, the universe, life, and
people were nothing more than complicated machines
who could be understood through analysis. He was a
genius of applied sciences, making groundbreaking dis-
coveries at Helix Labs, before he awakened as the Rift
of
Hephaestus,
Greek God of blacksmiths, craftsmen,
and volcanoes. Sight beyond the Mist exposed him to
phenomena he could not explain, and he became more
and more anxious. This was exasperated by the fact his
awakening came in the wake of a lab accident which
injured his spine, leaving him with a walking disability.
His spirit and body broken, he left Helix Labs, sentenc-
ing himself to exile from his beloved sciences.
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CITY OF MIST
A DOWNTOWN LOVE TRIANGLE
Drake’s new targets were the following.
• Pauline Woodworth
(Paul Bunyan, a giant lumber-
jack in American folklore) was a private construc-
tion contractor who possessed immense strength as
well as the power to grow bigger. She had her own
business,
Woodworth Builders,
and a beautiful
wife,
Ellie Woodworth
(Sleeper). Her Mythos urged
her to settle the wilderness, so she was interested in
construction projects outside town.
• David Nguyen
(Rift of King David) was a high-flying
executive in Orimaka Finance. His Mythos allowed
him to slay giants (David and Goliath), but also
pushed him to covet someone else’s wife (as the
Biblical king did).
• Samantha Goldstein, or
Goldie
(Rift of Goldilocks)
was a master thief with the power to get into any
home, bypassing locks, security systems, etc. and the
drive to take what other people own.
Drake set in motion the machinations that would lead
them to their deaths:
• He lured Pauline with a project of rebuilding the
abandoned fairground at the edge of town (settle the
wilderness).
• He arranged for David to have a bad date at the same
diner where Pauline and ellie dined, predicting that
the adultering king would set his heart on ellie.
• During that date, he had P.I. Holliday tip Goldie off
about a rich man in the Downtown diner who could
be an interesting mark. Naturally, she showed up, and
started casing David, planning to steal his money.
THIS FATEFUL NIGHT
A few weeks passed, with David harassing the Wood-
worths and Goldie sizing up David and trying to estab-
lish where he kept his fortune. Tonight, Drake’s plan
came to fruition.
• David followed Pauline to the fairground where they
battled it out, David and Goliath style, and he killed
her, shooting her with a revolver.
• Drake and his Carnies had a death trap waiting for
David, a lifelike mannequin made to look like ellie.
When David kissed her, his lips started burning. The
mannequin’s lips were glazed with poison.
• Realizing he was deceived, David raced back to town
to find the real Ellie and get medical help but it was
too late. The poison killed him and he crashed his
sports car close to the diner where they first met.
• Goldie was present at the car crash site, where she
realized David was involved in something bigger
and that in order to find out more, she must find
out where he came from. A customized death trap
already awaits her at the fairground.
The case begins with the car crash.
CARNIvAL OF MACHINeS
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