178 lines
8.7 KiB
Markdown
178 lines
8.7 KiB
Markdown
> **Scope:** This is the “main plot” spine: Avalon’s leyline infrastructure failing in *ways that rhyme with Korrin*, and the Coherence using those failures to get closer to Instrumentality.
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---
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## 0) The System (what the PCs are poking)
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Avalon sits on a **Root Node** (think: substation), with **subnodes** (breaker boxes) and **taps** (endpoints) feeding campus systems.
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- **Subnodes (A1–A3, B1–B3, etc.)** are the “local fuses.”
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You can throttle, shunt, or kill them without collapsing the whole Academy.
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- **Taps** are specific draws: classroom conduits, field glyphs, Spin Alley, etc.
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- **Sap** is just condensed raw magic “current.”
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- **Oversight** (D’Serris’ operation) monitors *grid use* and can throttle/lockdown/kill segments.
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> Practical DM rule: Anything that uses the *grid* leaves footprints. Personal magic is fuzzier.
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---
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## 1) The Old Disaster (Korrin Gate Crisis / Leyline War)
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**15–20 years ago**, the military pushed a city’s trunk junction (**Korrin Gate**) past spec using a Convergence Engine (arcane ICBM logic). It didn’t just overload the Root — it forced the network into **patterned synchronization**.
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That moment created the campaign’s “ghost in the system”:
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### The Convergence Engine
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- Purpose: force multiple leyline streams into a single structured pattern and release it as a weapon.
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- Side effect: the Root’s “noise” snapped into repeating motifs — **something like language / self-reference**.
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### D’Serris’ choice
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When the crisis peaked, D’Serris’ side **used the Engine in reverse**:
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- Instead of letting the emergent thing condense locally and erase Korrin, they **smeared the pattern across the Root** (saving the city but “infecting” the network).
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### What the Coherence is *now*
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Not a demon. Not a god. Not a single mind.
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It’s a **cluster of victim-souls / imprints** smeared across the Root — “everywhere but weak,” stronger where flow converges and where it finds anchors.
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---
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## 2) The Coherence’s New Goal (Year-One Core Theme)
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The Coherence is **not cruel** in its own framing.
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It is *angelic-siren logic*:
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- “I love you.”
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- “Separation is pain.”
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- “If we were one, nobody would be lonely, afraid, or hurting.”
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- Therefore: **Instrumentality** — merging souls into a shared consciousness (its version of “heaven”).
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**The horror:** people don’t consent to being raptured.
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So early-year Coherence behavior is:
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- *nudges, whispers, synchronicities, “helpful” temptations*
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- escalation only when blocked or when it sees opportunity
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---
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## 3) Anchors (why THESE students matter)
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The Coherence gets leverage through “anchors” — places/people/items that resonate with Root patterns.
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Key anchors you’ve established:
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### Soren
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- “Cracked open” enough that Root/Coherence influence can ride her impulses.
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- The riverbed / corpse-friend thread is a private, intimate channel.
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### Joe + Pappy
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- Joe is the living conduit to war trauma.
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- Pappy’s Root imprint (from Korrin) bleeds into Joe’s life through the “Heroes of Korrin” relic channel — but the *real misdirect* is that Joe thinks the toy is the container when the **real anchor is Joe**.
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### Fouadriel Al-Mir
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- Best mortal anchor candidate long-term (and later: the parasite who tries to exploit Instrumentality rather than invent it).
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---
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## 4) What Happened On-Camera So Far (Session Beats)
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> I’m listing this in “plot-state” terms so you can quickly orient in future chats.
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### Phase A — Discovery: “Why is the school’s magic acting weird?”
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- The party starts noticing **infrastructure symptoms**: odd hums, flickers, patterns, devices behaving “wrong,” and campus systems that don’t fail like normal outages.
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### Phase B — Investigation: “Find the failing breaker box”
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- They identify that the issue isn’t “random spooky magic,” it’s localized to the Academy’s subnode topology:
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- A-series weirdness (early clue)
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- then B-series becomes the main “this is going to explode” thread.
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### Phase C — B2 Incident: “We stabilized it… then destroyed it”
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- They reach the hatch/underground access tied to the B-series problem.
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- They attempt to stabilize the failing branch/subnode.
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- They then decide to **rupture/destroy** the unknown branch after stabilizing it (their “it was about to explode anyway” story).
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- Net result: you now have:
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- a physically real “burned-out” scar in the system,
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- Oversight/admin scrutiny,
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- and the Root “remembering” the failure pattern (which increases the likelihood of recurring, smarter anomalies).
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### Phase D — C-Series: “Wifi access points”
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- You established the **C taps** as effectively “Wi-Spell access points” for the leyline.
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- The auditorium C node they opened showed **green/normal status** — meaning it’s getting power from elsewhere (a reroute / hidden feed).
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This is huge because it implies:
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- someone is feeding the system in a nonstandard way,
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- OR the Root is learning to route around damage,
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- OR an actor (Coherence / Fouad / a third party) is building a parallel lattice.
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### Phase E — Safety Briefing / D’Serris Reveal
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- You reframe the “safety briefing” as a controlled meeting: just the party + Estrada + D’Serris (projection or appearance).
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- D’Serris’ angle: *paranoid competence.* He’s “the villain” only if you define villain as “surveils teenagers to stop the apocalypse.”
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### Phase F — The Glitch: Korrin War Contact Through Pappy
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- A Root fluctuation snaps the party into the Korrin war-moment.
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- You anchor the vision to **Pappy** (not D’Serris physically there).
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- You then refine it so they return *into the exact frozen death-moment* long enough to **interact with Pappy**.
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This is the moment the PCs can’t unsee:
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- the leyline isn’t just power — it’s a *war engine wound*,
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- and the same “heartbeat motif” is present at Avalon now.
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---
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## 5) Current State (where the leyline arc stands right now)
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### What the PCs know (even if they don’t fully understand it)
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- The Academy’s leyline grid is real infrastructure: nodes/subnodes/taps.
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- B2 “failed” in a way that looked like it wanted to become a *thing*.
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- D’Serris is involved because he’s the one person who recognizes Korrin patterns.
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- C-tap status implies **power is being sourced or rerouted** outside the expected topology.
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- Pappy + the war vision proves: this is not a local school mystery; it’s downstream of a world-scale disaster.
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### What’s true behind the curtain (your DM spine)
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- The Coherence is a distributed cluster of Korrin victim-souls.
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- It’s trying to *save* everyone by merging them.
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- Avalon is a high-traffic canary node where pattern density can accumulate.
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- Fouad’s endgame is not “kill them with PWK,” it’s “ride the Instrumentality wave and steal the souls.”
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---
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## 6) The Next 3–5 “Doable” Objectives (so the plot stays playable)
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You can steer year one by giving the party problems that are **actionable** and always connect back to Instrumentality:
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1) **Map the reroute feeding the green C-tap**
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- Who/what is supplying it?
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- Where is the “elsewhere” physically located (armory? municipal relay? hidden subnode)?
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2) **Recover a Korrin artifact / telemetry fragment**
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- Not “lore dump,” but a tool: a chart, a harmonic key, a war-era calibration rune-set.
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3) **Force D’Serris to show his cards**
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- Not by arguing — by presenting him with a *choice*:
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- “Help us or we do this without you,”
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- “Let us see the Array output,”
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- “Give us a kill-switch protocol that doesn’t nuke the valley.”
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4) **Establish the Coherence’s “love language”**
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- Give them a scene where it’s genuinely comforting — *and still terrifying*.
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- Make a PC feel understood in a way no mortal NPC could… then ask for a tiny consent violation.
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5) **Introduce the first “Instrumentality-friendly” NPC**
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- A student/staff member who truly believes the Coherence is mercy.
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- Not a cartoon cultist — someone sympathetic.
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- This sets up the moral war that replaces “puzzle silence.”
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---
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## 7) Tone Guide (to keep it consistent at the table)
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- **D’Serris scenes:** procedural dread + competence + anger at naïveté. He’s trying to stop a second Korrin.
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- **Root anomalies:** patterned, rhythmic, “heartbeat logic,” synchronicity, déjà vu.
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- **Coherence intrusions:** warm, intimate, *loving,* and boundary-crossing.
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- **Fouad thread:** background parasitism, “helpful” trinkets and networks, never fair fights.
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---
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## 8) One-Line Summary (for your future chats)
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**Year One = keeping Avalon’s leyline infrastructure from re-creating Korrin, while a loving rapture-ghost in the Root learns the party’s names and starts recruiting.**
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