Zero Hour is fighting an unending war. There are brief periods of peace brought about by containment, but even during those times, the Operatives monitor the world for any signs of outbreak. For Zero Hour, dealing with the Contagion is a constant struggle to keep their allies motivated and working together. This vector allows them to combine their individual abilities and use them to grant each other new abilities specific to the mission at hand. It allows for infiltration of changelings in vampire courts, werewolves to pose as Sin-Eaters in high standing, and Prometheans to sit in on an Arisen guild conclave.
Gathering an Intel Package allows the Unit to gain as much data as they need for planning their mission. They pass this request for information up their chain of command and within the hour be inundated with building plans, technical schematics, weapon registries, and anything else relevant to their request. This information all arrives in tight, easy-to-digest pieces of information, from other factions, other members of Zero Hour, or perhaps even the God-Machine.
What makes the Intel Package different from having to go through the process of contacting their own informants is the information seemingly appears on its own to each Operative. Their phones receive instant messages detailing the identities of the mobsters hanging out at a bar, and their laptops instantly download large schematics of the building surrounding a corrupted piece of Infrastructure. Some packages could cover identities and additional resources of staff employed solely to perform an important part of the mission. The package could provide aid in the form of the sanitation crew parking their truck in the center of a street, to block egress from a parking garage, or it could offer access to a security camera feed of a guard’s patrol routes. It can turn an unwinnable situation into a challenge, and a challenging situation into a piece of cake.
A Necropolitan asks their Mekhet ally for an exit strategy out of a building flooding with SWAT. The Saboteur requests their Acanthus sponsors help them avoid blowing their Cover by gaining enough information to pass as a Pure werewolf to enter their meeting. The Deviant’s phone blows up with information on how to convince the Cheiron Group’s hunters they are from corporate and not the target they are hunting.
System: Once activated, each Operative in the Unit can pool their dots in Social Merits and can share them among each other, including reducing one character’s Merit rating to improve another’s. The vector conveys the same social standing and persona among each Operative, despite how incongruous it may seem for a low-ranking Winter Court changeling to suddenly be an Invictus prince, or similar. This can reduce a Merit to zero and increase it beyond its normal maximum.
The Unit must then come up with a detailed plan for how they wish to proceed. While they can deviate from this plan over the course of the mission, once they have started, they must continue to pursue the mission’s goal, or the power will lapse.
An Operative who finds they must draw upon their group’s Alternate Identity is able to manifest a press ID to get them into an exclusive event, while an Operative on the run from the police may draw upon several dots of Contacts to reveal the detective pursuing him is a corrupt police officer indebted to another member of the Unit.
Dots deplete with each use, so when an Alternate Identity worth one dot is used, the dot disappears from the communal pool. This does not prevent further dots from being drawn from other Merits to “refuel” the expended Merit dots.
Cost: Each character must lose one dot from a single Social Merit (if they possess any) once the vector’s use is over, representing the strain this vector takes on a character’s social standing. However, as with the Sanctity of Merits (see Chronicles of Darkness p. 43) that dot can then be allocated elsewhere once the vector’s use ends.
Requirement: Social Merits may only be used as they are stated. Two or more Operatives are required for the use of this vector.
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Subterfuge
Action: Extended action; requires eight successes over one hour
Duration: One chapter Edges
Changelings, Demons, Deviants, Hunters, Prometheans: The art of keeping false identities or learning how to survive outside the system has given you the ability to think on your feet when lying to someone. This vector allows you the benefit of drawing on a strong false identity or elaborate deception-based Merit in the communal pool without you losing a dot from any of your contributed Social Merits.
Mummies: You are able to draw upon the vast resources of your cult and lend their aid to the mission. Your cult acts as a Social Merit all on its own. They can be treated as between 3 to 5 dots of Allies or Contacts depending on the cult structure, with a localized cult conveying 3 dots, a national cult contributing 4, and a global cult contributing 5. Sin-Eaters: You can draw upon information from the Intel Package and shift it to your allies almost instantaneously, no matter their plane of existence. This may take the form of an instantaneous spell ferrying information to other Operatives or a text message managing to make its way from the Underworld to a fortified bunker.
Beasts, Vampires, Werewolves: Blood, family, kinship: all allow you to access secret information not even on record. Using your pooled Social Merits, you can acquire information providing a target’s greatest shame or even their most well-hid- den crime. The intelligence just appears as a letter in your mailbox, a message on your phone, or an email in your inbox. Mages: Making your Social Merits available to the other vector participants also makes them part of your Order. You can use the other vector participants as Order Tool Yantras for the duration of the vector.
Specializations
Mastigos: Erasing an individual’s status, bank account, name, and family are horrifying concepts fully within the reach of a Mastigos Operative. Through their suave manipulations, a Mastigos applying this vector to assume someone else’s identity, take on their Contacts, or ingratiate in their relationships is able to erase the original target’s connections with all individuals caught up in the used Social Merits. For example, a Mastigos and her peers may use Alternate Identity to imitate a CEO for a crucial set of scenes and set their company off on a new direction. When tying up affairs and moving on from this vector’s use, the original CEO is swiftly ignored and ultimately forgotten by his colleagues and employees. This specialization does not apply to other members of Zero Hour, unless they choose to remove themselves from their social contacts and associates. If they do, they regain the Merit points to spend elsewhere.
Saboteur: The art of bringing down the God-Machine’s machinations applies equally well toward containing Contagion outbreaks. The Saboteur can provide an additional three dots of Contacts, Alternate Identity, or Allies to the Intel Package as long as the information leads to the destruction or disruption of a target. Once used, these dots disappear. These dots appear as the Saboteur calls upon long dried-up connections and resources, milking them for their use for potentially the final time.