[Taking Up the Fight] Removing the Veil

[Marcus Bone]

A short one this time, but an important one - Removing the Veil or the trigger that revealed to the characters that something wasn't right in the world.

REMOVING THE VEIL
There are many reasons why a character will take up the fight against the ever encroaching darkness. But what motivated you? In most cases there is a single or series of events that opened your character’s eyes to the truth that normally stays hidden; the conspiracies and lies that fools most people into believing they are safe.

Often this event will, for better or worse, become the driving influence in a character’s fight. It will keep them up late at night and they will both dread its return while being fascinated by its circumstances.

The events around the lifting of this veil can be used by both Players and Game Masters can use this information to create stories that not only personally affect the character, but also lead towards making a change to the world at large.

What actually occurred and its effects on the character are left to the Player to decide. It could be a shared experience with the other players (i.e. they all witnessed the same supernatural event and now have similar nightmares), or something that has personally effected the directly. Whatever the scope and outcome, it is important to note that it is this event that ‘removed the veil’ and now marks them as being outside the normal bounds of a typical citizen of Dark America.

Examples

- You just can’t shake the dream. You, others on a bridge. Darkness, rain and a bright light from above. Now you’ve found others who have had the same dream, and they are their two in your nightmare. But what is its meaning, and what is the light?

- You thought it was just that cats liked you. You’d have one after another of the scruffy fellows follow you home when you were a kid, and when you go older you’d see them watching you at college, and latterly at your place of work. Now you realise that it’s not different cats, but only those with one black ear… or it the same cat in different bodies?

- There was an explosion and your family died. Now you are sure you’ve seen your children, not once but many times. Always in the backgrounds of photos in the newspaper.

- You walked out alone. They never charged you, but you know that he wasn’t a ‘he’ at all. He was a ‘thing’. A ‘thing’ in a man’s body. And he’d been your partner for years.

- You know that smell? The one you get when you get near places where people died? No? I don’t get it, why am I the only one who smells it?