Sample file SampleBy Brian Campbell, Stephen Michael DiPesa, Conrad Hubbard, Samfile Inabinet, Kathleen Ryan, Malcolm Sheppard Contents 1 Credits Authors: Bill Bridges (Introduction, Epilogue), Brian Camp- bell (Signs of the Times, The Revolution Will Be Televised), Stephen Michael DiPesa (Hell on Earth), Conrad Hubbard (A Whimper, Not a Bang), Sam Inabinet (The Earth Will Shake), Kathleen Ryan (Prologue), Malcolm Sheppard (Judg- ment, Designing Ascension). World of Darkness created by Mark Rein•Hagen. Storyteller game system designed by Mark Rein•Hagen. Development: Bill Bridges Editing: Carl Bowen Art Direction: Aileen E. Miles Interior Art: Langdon Foss, Michael Gaydos, Jeff Lauben- stein, Larry MacDougall, Jean-Sebastien Rossbach, Alex Sheikman, Drew Tucker Cover Art: Christopher Shy Layout, Typesetting and Cover Design: Aileen E. Miles © 2004 White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. 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SampleFor a free White Wolf catalog call 1-800-454-WOLF. file Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com; alt.games.whitewolf and rec.games.frp.storyteller 2 Ascension Contents Prologue 4 Introduction: The Trumpet’s Clarion 14 Chapter One: Signs of the Times 20 Chapter Two: Judgment 50 Chapter Three: The Revolution Will Be Televised 96 Chapter Four: The Earth Will Shake 120 Chapter Five: A Whimper, Not a Bang 144 Chapter Six: Hell on Earth 166 Chapter Seven: Designing Ascension 188 Epilogue:Sample Glory Days file220 Contents 3 Sample file 4 Ascension Prologue Amanda waits without impatience. that steel could not harm. The Old Man would never have done She sits on the shoulder of a titanic rock — it, so some other smith added to the master Euthanatos’ craft after wheat-colored, fine-grained, perilously smooth. Mercedes abandoned him — after she followed her lover Alexander Her right leg is stretched straight out and arched Gericault to the Labyrinths of the Nephandi. After she entered to follow its curve; the boulder is without feature or the Caul and sold her soul to darkness for irrevocable eternity. foothold, and only the friction of denim on stone Senex balanced these tools perfectly for Mercy. They are prevents her sliding to the ground below. Around uncannily suited to the hands of her Avatar’s current incarnation. her left foot is looped a barber’s strop. Her leg bends Amanda flips one in the air and catches it with thoughtless ease. and twists a little to keep the leather taut as she David adds kindling to the fire but feels a chill creep up his arms. works. Her knee braces her hands as she guides the He remembers two photographs of Mercedes as a Nephandus, weapons along the grit. taken shortly before Senex slew her in 1923. Below the massif, David Cho kneels in powder-soft sand In the first, she stands on Coney Island by the Ferris wheel, and lays a fire against a smaller slab. He makes a nest of dry grass dressed as a flapper. She has a dancer’s centered balance — the and sage leaves, sets withered fern stalks and oak twigs beside swaying hips, artful pose, sensuous stance of a courtesan. Yet, the tinder, reaches for flint and steel. Before he strikes, he prays; compared to the young girls, the housewives, the grandmothers before he prays, he looks around. He and Amanda are the only beside her on the boardwalk, her body seems deadened, slack, living things he sees. These rocks, in a misshapen circle of twelve propped up by habit only. The barabbus leans against the rail — these are the only landmarks in a desert too bare for dunes and looking down on masses of day-trippers from the metropolis, and too flat for concealment. Water wore this country to its bones long there is nothing in her face but sun. ago. The sea rebuilt it, aeon by aeon, from grit and gravel. When In the second, Mercy has seen the camera and who holds the ocean left, the dust devils invaded, scouring the sandstone it — a man whose shadow falls clearly across her pale summer into powder, but tonight there is no wind, no water, no clouds dress. It is Gericault, and she has turned toward him. She smiles, in the stark, cold sky. her dark eyes lively. The crow’s feet around them make a strange David draws sparks, catches them in wool, places them gin- pattern — not the marks of laughter. Smoker’s creases surround gerly into their cocoon. He watches the first white thread rising, her mouth. Her cheeks are pinched and sunken despite her follows it with his gaze, watches it disappear into a blackness voluptuous figure, belying her youthful hands. Passions etch her full of unwavering, bitter stars. He smells only arid air and acrid deeply; that smile is earnest, painful, demanding. smoke. He feels only sand’s heat and night’s chill. He hears only The two photographs were kept in a traveling frame — a his breath, the tinder whispering on his fire, and the thin, silken small leather folio, cracking with age and desiccation, on the scraping of Amanda honing her knives. shelves of Senex’s study on Cerberus, beside Mercedes’ knives. Not her knives, he reminds himself. Mercedes’ knives. When David and his cabal, the Second Seven, visited the From the corner of his eyes, so that she might not feel his Euthanatos’ college after many years of traveling with Amanda, glance, he studies his companion. the Old Man spoke to each alone. He took David last — brought Mercedes’ blades are steel, folded, clay-tempered, curved like him to the study, listened to him, heard the history of the Ecstatic’s katana, strong and lethal along their entire length. A Portuguese journey, taught him old magic and new rotes, gave him fragile sorcerer stole them from their native Japan and put them to ill fire from an ebon box on the shelves. purpose in Spain. Mercedes Gonzaga de Ortiz bani Euthanatos, When David saw the portraits, he knew instantly who they slew him and took his weapons as trophies. Senex of Cerberus were. Amanda had been there a thousand times. She had handled set them in the hilts and handles of his apprentice’s own foci — the frame, peered curiously at the decaying calfskin. Yet she never Toledo-made masterpieces whose own blades were broken. realized who the woman was. As Amanda works them, starlight flashes black, white and He glances up at her again. Her pose is utterly unlike her yellow from their edges. Cold iron, pure silver and raw gold have predecessor’s — leaner, taller, without coquetry, intent only on beenSample fused into blade, guard and pommel. The ornamentation the keenness of the edge. She looksfile nothing like Mercy. Her hair weakens the knives, but Mercedes had wanted to kill creatures is blond, her skin light, her eyes blue. But in the lines of her face, Prologue 5.