The Endgame FAQ
So, the game ended (rather suddenly, I know), and a wrap-up meeting was held on September 17th. There were a few questions that repeatedly came up, and in the interests of those players who weren’t able to attend the wrap-up meeting for one reason or another, some of those questions are presented here for your general amusement. Be warned: these will probably be long answers; virtually nothing in the game had a “simple” answer.
Oh, and feel free to contact me with more questions that you might have, in case the burning question that you want answered isn’t handled here....
- What was Prince Robertson's deal, anyway? What gender was Shannon, anyway?
- Hey, where did Hans and Mary, the two trapped Sabbat, go? They just vanished one day....
- A couple of us tried getting influence in the Police Department of St. Louis but where blocked somehow. Who stopped us?
- Who was going after the "heroes" of East St. Louis? Someone appeared to be gunning for them!
- Was something going on with the Gateway Arch? Just wondering....
- What was going on with all those religion-themed statuettes that kept popping up?
Okay, let's answer the easy part first. Shannon Robertson's gender was irrelevant. When the other storytellers and I were designing the game, seeding roles and so forth, the concept of having a remote Prince who rarely got involved in the day-to-day matters of running the city really struck us as a good thing to have, especially since it added a potential new wrinkle to the classic "I want to be the Prince" mania that seems to affect players in a game. Since we didn't necessarily envision the Prince being at the sessions and instead being a removed, shadowy figure who never really interacted with the hoi polloi, it didn't matter what gender the Prince was -- it would virtually never come up. I ended up deciding on giving the Prince a gender-neutral name, simply so any of our storytellers (two female, four males) could be the "voice" of the Prince, in a pinch. I even joked about giving the Prince the "Multiple Personality" Derangement simply so any Storyteller could play the Prince without "contradicting" what other Storytellers playing the Prince did or said -- after all, any discrepancies could be explained away as one persona doing something that another one wasn't aware of, right? Then things snowballed, creating a very interesting back-story that fleshed things out, and gave Robertson more of a deal than previous envisioned....
The simplest form of the story is that Shannon Robertson was an insane Brujah with an incredibly low Self-Control and Humanity and the "Multiple Personality" Derangement (as mentioned above). Specifically, Shannon had a Self-Control of 1 -- it must have been higher once, but time (and evil deeds) have a tendency to make a Kindred's ability to control the Beast wane. Also, because Shannon was a Brujah, all Self-Control checks were made at a lower difficulty, per the Clan Flaw -- so Shannon essentially had no Self-Control when it came to resist frenzy. Combine this with the Multiple Personality Derangement, and that meant that virtually any time Prince Robertson was placed under stress, there'd be a fragmenting and the multiple personas would start fighting for control. And, of course, Court was very stressful, right? So, the Prince basically stepped out of the limelight, let Seneschal Valorian run things, simply to avoid Frenzying at the drop of a hat at Court and having a perilously low Humanity slip even lower, or away completely. At home, interacting with only a select handful of Kindred (such as the Seneschal, the Keeper of Elysium, some of the Primogen and so on), Shannon was perfectly fine and not crazy (but kept using the "Royal We" to cover any slips or problems) -- but few players got to see that, alas, since few players were in Robertson's inner circle.
A more detailed version of the story would get into why Shannon Robertson's Humanity was so low (it involved the murder of Prince de la Courcel and the steps Shannon took to make it happen), how the various personas in Shannon's head interacted, what the Prince was doing to try to overcome this problem and so on. We'll possibly touch on that as it impacts some other questions -- but a full explanation of all of this would take several pages, so I'm sticking with the "short" form of this answer.
Oh, and I'd like to address a rumor that was going around the game -- Prince Shannon was not a Diablerist. The way we "designed" the Prince, the mere concept of Diablerie is abhorrent; Shannon could not imagine willingly (or even accidentally) eating your fellow Kindred, and feels that those who do so deserve only the Final Death. Just so people know, you know?
The very short form of this answer is that Hans Jensen and Mary Might figured out that Prince Robertson wanted something in their possession. They gave it to Shannon; Prince Robertson let Genevieve, Mary's ghoul smuggle them out of town in a very large packing crate.
The longer form of the answer involves a much more complicated plot....
This question was asked by a select handful of people, all of whom had fair-to-middling levels of influence in the Police department, who were getting stumped in their attempts to get more influence. While the players themselves caused most of the interference -- the person with Police Influence x5 stopped the person with Police Influence x4 from getting a stronger position in the force; the person with Police x4 attacked the influence of the person with Police x5 and so on -- several players became aware of a person with even more influence, above them all, stopping power grabs within the police department, and became curious to that person's identity.
That person was Joseph Mokwa, the Chief of Police of St. Louis. Due to the machinations of the players with Police Influence in the game, Mokwa became aware of non-officers having "pull" within the department, and started doing what he could to minimize such influence from outsiders.
Now, before anyone accuses us of giving Chief Mokwa an advantage that other players did not have, we should point out that one of the Brujah in the game, Angel Walker, did have a connection with Mokwa (and it was even mentioned in the write-up of Angel Walker on the site). Therefore, it was logical to assume that because Mokwa knew that Walker was using her connections to perform some quasi-legal actions in the police department, there might be other people doing the same thing as well. Chief Mokwa was able to use his position within the department to increase his own influence, which he then used to alter, block and remove other people's influence as well. Simple, eh?
Mayor Carl Officer was the man gunning for the "costumed vigilantes" of East St. Louis. Why? Because every good hero needs a villain, right? Also, given the blatant corruption and obvious power mongering of Officer, he seemed like the perfect candidate for villain status. He was unashamedly stacking the city council with his cronies, sheltering criminal activity within his own administration and generally being evil, corrupt and as fraudulent as a twenty-three dollar bill.
Now, given that this shady and crooked mayor suddenly had several spandex-wearing crime-fighters show up in his town, why wouldn't he do what he could to go after them? Yes, the costumed crusaders were going after minor street crime, beating up hookers and drug dealers and the occasional crooked cop, but eventually, they might set their sights on Officer -- or at least, that's how Officer's paranoid mind saw it. So he decided to go after them. Of course, Officer didn't necessarily know who the heroes were, so he started investigating people who appeared to have too much influence. When he found someone who appeared to have influence disproportionate to their situation (such as a unemployed man living in his mother's basement with undue amounts of Legal Influence), he went after them. In Officer's mind, doing so would eventually root out the heroes (either by finding out who they were or making them come to the "rescue" of the people he was oppressing) and prevent them from going after him....
It's funny, but when we first announced that the game was going to be taking place in St. Louis, several players mentioned that they had heard occult rumors about the Arch itself -- some people told that they had heard the Arch was originally supposed to be a monolith but was changed for mystical reasons; others mentioned that the ghosts of several workers killed in the construction were supposed to haunt the place. A quick Google search even turned up a page about the Masonic Astronomy of the Arch!
Further investigation brought up other interesting notes concerning sacred geometry, the Kabbalah, numerology and even the mystical properties of the materials used in the construction of the Arch. Ken Hite, in his collected Suppressed Transmissions columns (which I highly recommend reading if you're trying to get ideas on how to involve "high weirdness" in your games without going totally overboard and having Lovecraftian creatures pop up) also talks a lot about sacred geometry, and even talks about the Arch a few times, which gave me further ideas....
So, it seemed that everyone was expecting us to do something with the Arch, expecting us to make it somehow significant and meaningful....
So, in the end we left it alone, made it a blank slate that people could write their own meaning on.
Eventually, if enough people pressed, we might have made the Arch into something, perhaps some sort of cosmic battery that could be later used, but for the beginning -- we waited to see what people wanted to make the Arch into. After all, as we point out in the Melville quote on the splash page for this site, "all objects look well through an arch," right?
Ah, now we get to a big background plot, perhaps one of the main plots for the first portion of the game. There isn't a simple way to explain this, but we'll try.
Ages ago, I read a book by an author named Katherine Neville; the book was called The Eight and it was essentially about a treasure hunt for a chess set believed to have been owned by Charlemagne and reputed to have magical powers (and that's all I say, in case you want to read the book someday and don't want the plot spoiled for you). Further mentions of magical chess sets by Ken Hite in one of his Suppressed Transmissions columns (which, again, are highly recommend and fun readings) further cemented the idea that magic chess and magic chess sets were just damned cool, and it stuck in my head. I even tried bringing up magical chess pieces in Chicago Reborn, but I waited too long before bringing it up, and well, that LARP was essentially over as I was trying to put the element of magical chess sets in.
In any case, when starting to put together plots for this LARP, when the storytellers were discussing things, the idea of giving people a treasure hunt of sorts to occupy their time came up, along with a few ideas of what the "McGuffins" people were hunting should be. The magical chess pieces from Chicago Reborn were brought up again as well, and the idea of a hunt for the pieces was born. (It should be noted that this discussion was part of a larger discussion of the themes and goals of the LARP, not just a "how do we keep the players busy" discussion; we knew we didn't really have to do anything to keep players busy -- players are always good at generating their own plots.) So, in any case, it was decided to place the Chess Set of Charlemagne into the game, and grant it the power to restore a Kindred's Humanity. This also tied into the motivations of two main NPCs in the game -- Prince Shannon Robertson, who wanted to regain Humanity, and the Tzimisce Inconnu Monitor who lived in the empty sewers of the city (e.g., there was no Nosferatu Warren in the sewers, allowing the Tzimisce full reign) who wanted to further refine the Path of Metamorphosis and thought that the chess set would assist him in that end.
Granted, the entire chess set was not placed into St. Louis; there was no reason for all thirty-two pieces and the board to be in the city. Instead, it was decided that a select number of pieces would be in the city, and that players would slowly learn about the other pieces and attempt to go after them or find ways to have them brought to town. It was also decided that since the chess set was involved in the restoration of Humanity, it should have a potentially biblical theme, with good and evil fighting it out during the course of a game. To that end, the white pieces were given a Heavenly theme -- pieces were created after the virtues and saints -- and the dark pieces were deemed Infernal and created after sins and demons. (A complete listing of the pieces can be found here).
A select number of pieces were scattered throughout St. Louis; the majority of the pieces in play were in the hands of the Prince and the Monitor, although other pieces were given to assorted NPCs. Prince Robertson started the game with the Black King (Lucifer), the Black Queen's Bishop (Mammon), the Black Queen's Knight (Belial) and several pawns (the white pawn of Charity and the black pawns of Pride and Gluttony). The Monitor started the game with the White King (Jesus), the Black Queen's Rook (Azazel) and the white pawns of Faith and Temperance. An local occult figure, Mr. Rupert Hunting, had the Black King's Bishop, but thought it was a statue of a False Prophet. Occult Influence rumors mentioned this statue several times, in order to get players interested in it. The White Queen was in the possession of the St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish; they thought it was an icon of the Virgin Mary (which it was, in a sense). The White Pawn of Justice was in the possession of one Judge Hiram Percy, who only knew it as family heirloom. The Black Pawn of Rage was located in the Wat Phrasriratanaram Thai Buddhist Temple; the monks thought it was merely a statue of a demon. The Black Pawn of Greed was in the possession of one Edward Nagle, the CEO of a Trisol Incorporated. The Black Pawn of Sloth was in the possession of our lovely Sabbat, Hans and Mary. Finally, the Black Pawn of Envy was in the possession of one Frieda Hoffsdottyr, the Tremere High Regent in Kansas City. Other pieces would eventually have been brought to the city as needed, although it was presumed that eventually the players would be actively seeking them out and bring them to St. Louis on their own.
In any case, the people who knew about these pieces ended up plotting and scheming to get them; for instance, once Hans and Mary realized that Prince Robertson wanted the pieces, bartered for their safe passage out of town with the Sloth Pawn. Or, for another example, the Monitor, in an effort to get the Rage Pawn once it was stolen out of Voeller Garwood by the Nosferatu, kidnapped five street thugs (who coincidentally were gang members controlled by Matthias Griffin) in order to use them to attack the Nosferatu who had stolen it from Voeller Garwood. The Cult of Eden, an occult group, even went so far as to murder Rupert Hunting in order to get a piece as well.
Eventually, the theory was that one person would get enough of the pieces and could begin to enact the ritual that would restore Humanity, but obviously we never got that far into the game to do so.
But that's what was going on with the religious-themed statuettes.
And that's it for the major questions I was asked at the wrap-up session! Feel free to contact me with more questions that you might have!