The 24-hour news cycle has been both a boon and a burden for those working against the Contagion. On the one hand, learning of a new outbreak instantaneously is a life-saver. No more attempts to fly agents to suspected blooms and having them come back with red herrings and dead ends, if they come back at all. No more digging through musty libraries and newspaper morgues to dig up relevant information. Now it’s all a Google search and a Twitter war away. They say that nothing travels faster than bad news, and these days bad news can be measured in seconds.
On the other hand, information itself now acts like the Contagion. False information is a virus in its own right: it grows, spreads, and infects minds long before an inoculation of fact can be administered. Even facts themselves are questioned, distorted, and discarded. Some paranoid cryptocrats worry that reality itself has been corrupted by the Contagion. Of course, those who whisper such lunacies would argue that you’re not paranoid if you’re right. Just you wait until you wake up one day and the earth really is flat.
The Contagion must be stopped — no one in the Cryptocracy doubts this. But sometimes, you must inflict a little more harm before you can do some good. Some cures can kill off a localized area to preserve the larger population. And the same is true of facts. Occasionally, the cryptocrats need to inject a little more fiction to give the facts time to restore the health of the narrative. Sometimes, a bureau just needs to buckle down, come up with a plan, and spread a little fake news of their own.
A Winter Courtier conspires with her two compatriots in a discount hotel room. Three mages hold a “strategy session” all day in a coffee shop with open laptops. A vampire paces back and forth in the back room of the club, using a whiteboard to argue with a werewolf and a demon.
System: Three cryptocrats in the same faction spend at least six hours in a “strategy session,” constructing a plausi- ble series of events. Each spends a point of Willpower, and one of the members makes a roll. If successful, the narrative of events constructed starts to propagate, and is generally believed to be accurate for 24 hours. Pictures and videos surface that support the proposed events, articles will appear in respectable publications investigating the allegations, and high-profile celebrities will trend hashtags in support of the false narrative. The users of this vector could even reconstruct a completely true narrative in this fashion, just to get it visible, but the objective truth or fiction of the narrative is irrelevant to what happens next.
Even people who aren’t online hear about the story. Newspaper columns and magazine columns sympathetic to your view accidentally get bumped to the front page or become the cover story. Bums in alleyways whisper snip- pets of your press release. People in restaurants overhear a conversation supporting your story, but they can’t find who said it. Graffiti supporting your ideas appears over the ads in the subway. For a day, the odds of a random person encountering the story significantly increases.
After 24 hours, the wheels start to come off. Even if true, the evidence presented in the previous cycle gets drawn into question. Counter-articles come out against the proposed narrative. Social media wars erupt featuring increasingly vulgar hashtags. Soccer moms who hadn’t even heard of the story earlier in the week suddenly develop opinions that they share loudly in the salon. For the following 24 hours, the proposed sequence is still in the public eye, but its authenticity is now in doubt. Once the second 24-hour cycle is completed, the world at large forgets about the story, and moves on to the next scandal du jour.
This vector can only be used once a story by a bureau.
Cost: Each of the three cryptocrats using this vector must spend a Willpower point before rolling.
Requirement: Three cryptocrats in the same bureau must stay in contact with each other for six hours prior to the use of this vector.
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Expression Action: Instant; takes at least six hours Duration: 48 hours
Edges
Beasts, Changelings, Deviants: The truth wants to be free. At least, cryptocrats with this edge think so. If the narrative is true (or as true as the bureau believes it to be), there is no second cycle of counter-narrative — the vector simply pushes the story into being viral for a second 24 hours before it disappears.
Demons, Mummies, Vampires: Sometimes, not being plugged into the constant news cycle has its advantages. For one thing, you have time to think through your strategy and you can better anticipate the long-term consequences of your plan. If a cryptocrat with this edge leads the strategy session, the first cycle where the narrative is believed is extended to 48 hours. If desired, cryptocrats with this edge can choose a “quick and dirty” approach that only takes three hours to plan, but only grants the default 24-hour positive cycle.
Hunters, Mages, Prometheans: These cryptocrats know about the value of keeping a story moving. How the spin plays in Detroit isn’t the same as how it’ll work in Dublin. Those with this edge can generate a smaller, more localized version of this vector (dubbed by some as “Fake Local News”). Using only two cryptocrats in the bureau, they can spend a scene discussing strategy before releasing the story into the world. The news only spreads through the major metropolitan area (if the users are within one), or to the nearest major city (if not). The vector otherwise works as written.
Sin-Eaters, Werewolves: Spirits and ghosts love to gossip as much as anyone else. Sure, they don’t think of it as gossip, but they spread information and stories as much as anyone else. Cryptocrats with this edge can target the Shadow (if werewolves) and the Underworld (if Sin-Eaters). If the story is only directed at one of these, the positive cycle lasts for a week, rather than 24 hours. (The negative cycle still spins out over the course of a 24-hour span.)
Specializations
Invictus: The First Estate has cherished truth since the days of the Camarilla. Not the actual truth, of course... don’t be absurd. But the concept of truth is important to so many. Mortals, ghouls, and even the Kindred simply want to believe something is true, if presented with enough convic- tion. If an Invictus leads a strategy session for The Big Lie, she can keep the narrative going. Every 24 hours, she can spend another Willpower and initiate a quick five-minute “check in” call or meeting with the original users of this vector. After a successful meeting to discuss recent events, the original cycle of positive news repeats. If the Invictus vampire doesn’t spend the Willpower or can’t arrange for a check in, the follow-up counter-narrative cycle begins.
Mysterium: Knowledge is power, and leaving the mark of knowledge in the minds of others, even Sleepers, is a valuable gift. Members of the Mysterium leading this vector’s use may leave the lasting imprint of the news flash in their targets’ minds, and it will remain long after the news has disappeared from the headlines. If this news story is ever raised again in conversation or via broadcast, the target immediately recalls it and remembers how shocking, terrifying, amusing, or scandalous it might have been, rather than dismissing it as a fake headline. Depending on the news story, this may create lasting effects on the targets’ stability (consider a Resolve or Composure penalty of two dice whenever the news comes up), may invigorate them toward a certain action (consider a Presence or Resolve bonus of two dice), or scare them away from the focus of the news (inability to use Willpower in the scandal-targeted individual’s presence).