Confederation: Cosmic Tier Hunters

## Tier Four: Cosmic/Confederation

Ever since *Mage: The Awakening: Imperial Mysteries*, there has been a fourth Tier in Chronicles of Darkness games. A brief description of this follows:

### Cosmic Scope

At the Cosmic Tier, a game is *cosmic*. The effects of the game go beyond Earth, affecting other worlds or other realities.

### Without Division

The divisions of Tiers One through Three no longer apply. The Orders of mages or the Conspiracies of hunters fade into irrelevance.

### Potent Cast

At Tier Four, even the powers available to the "underdogs" appear godlike to the lower Tiers. A Methuselah vampire can learn Disciplines that resemble plot devices, while a Primal werewolf routinely deals with Rank 6 or higher spirits.

### From Here, They Look Like Ants

At Tier Four, it's tempting to just ignore the lesser Tiers. An ascended Deathlord has little use for mere mortals.

### Everyone Knows Your Name

A Tier Four game is isolated from the "little people", not just by power, but by distance and fame. A Tier Four character is a legend among the lower Tiers, and can't deal with them at the same level as before. Instead, the only beings a Tier Four character deals with regularly are other Tier Four characters.

### Sidebar: I Can't Believe It's Not Cosmic!

Astute readers may have noticed that theVoid Engineers fit some, but not all, of these criteria. Cosmic Scope? It's in their Endowment's name. From Here, They Look Like Ants? Easy attitude to get into if you aren't a Starship Trooper and don't beam down. Everyone Knows Your Name? You can't get more isolated from other hunters than being in a different star system. But Without Division? Not really; they still have relationships to the other Conspiracies. Potent Cast? Not unless you count their ability to survive in dangerous realms; and that's only at high ends of Life Support.

So are the Void Engineers a Confederation? Depends on what you want for your own game! You can easily make them one. Just add the rules below, and change their politics so that they only deal with the other Confederations. On the other hand, if you don't want them to be a Confederation, cap Helm and Hull at 1 and rename their Endowment to something like Powered Armor.

## Tier Four Templates

A few rules are suggested for building a Tier Four template:

### Phenomenal Power

A Tier Four template can expand on existing powers and themes in new ways, and accomplish godlike effects easily. An Archmage gains new Practices, starting with "make a spell adapt to its surroundings" and proceeding to "become an Arcanum and do anything within its scope". A Methuselah becomes the ultimate survivor or the apex predator. A Titled Changeling plays the game of the gods.

### Exacting Requirements

A Tier Four power, though, has its own prerequisites. The Imperial Practices require a Quintessence, a specific change to the material world needed to fuel a spell. Ancient Rituals require a series of blood rites carried out in all corners of the globe. True Nightmares call for a truly unique fear to be discovered as a power source.

### Imperium Defenses

Tier Four supernaturals are resistant to reality shifts; they have to be, in order to deal as equals or even minor nuisances to Rank 6 entities. An Archmage retreats into the Golden Road to avoid being retroactively wiped from the timeline. A Methuselah becomes a fixed point unchanged even by effects that make vampirism never have existed. A Perfected Mummy's name is written into the stars, and will continue to be summoned even after humanity becomes extinct.

### Beyond the Known Realms

Many supernaturals already have a way to travel to other realms of existence, such as the Hedge or the Shadow, but this is essential in a Tier 4 game (otherwise, it's not exactly cosmic). Any Tier Four supernatural must be able to move beyond the material world, and should in theory be able to visit places outside the Fallen World.

And so...

## Evolved Hunter: Confederate

Sometimes, a Cell or Compact happens upon an Endowment that places them in a much greater world. Sometimes, an existing Conspiracy refines their Endowment to play in the realm of the Gods. When this happens, the new Endowment changes the organization itself so that it can hunt its more potent Enemy.

### Beneath Notice

Once a hunter joins a Confederation, he is obscured from all forms of magic. The mechanism of this varies; an order of supernatural assassins erases their names from the ledger of reality, while a group of super-scientists develops magic jamming, and a cult is protected by the favor of Nyarlathotep, but the effects are the same.

While the hunter can still be harmed by physical effects, such as a fireball, a monster's enhanced Strength, or a swarm of hungry nanomachines, she is protected from more abstract forms of attack. The following protective effects are unrolled, reflexive, and automatic.

* Any supernatural effect that targets her specifically fails as though its target did not exist. This does not extend to area effects such as explosions or cutting an area out of reality (unless those effects are specifically designed to target her or be centered on her); nor does it extend to indirect attacks such as enchanting a gun or summoning a spirit to deal with her.
* All-encompassing reality bending effects such as the Imperium Rite or altering the timeline do not affect her. The hunter is not necessarily aware of a change, much less that it unmade a technological superpower in pre-Columbian Central America, but she will remember that she was drinking her afternoon xocolatl (not tea!) a moment ago and will notice that everyone is suddenly speaking English rather than Yungay.
* Supernatural effects that reveal information do not reveal anything about the hunter. If the user is unaware of her, the effect acts as though she was not there; if the user is aware, the hunter blends in with everyone else or appears as "not important".
* Any supernatural effect that would allow a creature to know the future, such as reading the plans of Fate or looking through Time, instead reveals an alternate timeline in which the hunter was never born.

### Pursue Beyond the Borders

A Confederate who directly observes someone using any form of supernatural transportation may attempt a reflexive Wits+Occult roll to follow. This requires a particular number of successes:

 A reality available to a large group of beings, such as the Hedge or the Shadow
 Another part of the same reality, such as by teleportation or creating a gate
 A reality unique to a specific person or group, such as a Bolthole or a Golden Road
 Reality is unique to a specific type of supernatural, such as the Hedge or the Supernal
 Reality is beyond the Fallen World, such as Arcadia or Hell
 Transit method is available to mortals, such as passing through an Avernian Gate
 Supernatural is actively helping to bring passengers
 Supernatural is actively helping to bring hunter as a passenger

Note that this offers no particular protection against the hazards of another world; a hunter who lacks an Endowment (usually but not always the province of a Confederation) to protect against such things may still suffocate on alien worlds, have his soul torn by the Thorns, or be retroactively destroyed by entering the Supernal. Also note that in most cases this is a single one-way trip; the hunter needs to find another way out (though following the target through another realm is always a possibility), and repeating the trip requires finding someone to piggyback on again.

### Confederate Endowments

A Confederation has an Endowment that allows them to face godlike beings, not as equals, but as rebels. In a stand-up fight against a Methuselah or even the smallest of gods, a Confederate is still going to lose horribly, even if her Endowment can turn every lesser vampire in a city to ash or take out high-Rank spirits. But the Endowment allows the a clever and lucky Confederate a chance at beating the monster. A faerie might be able to dodge a lesser hunter's iron bullets... so the hunter assassinates the faerie with iron buckshot an inch from the back of the head. Angra Mainyu might be able to smite a Confederate with a thought... so the hunter plays one god against another, and pulls out a god-slaying sword when he's dealing with Zeus.

A few possible Confederate Endowments:

* The Confederation has an extensive and accurate library of supernatural sociology. Each hunter has memorized all the relationships among the global supernatural power structure, and can easily create an **Apple of Discord.**
* The Confederation is a cult, and has their God on speed-dial. When they get into trouble, or need a move made in Heaven to create an opening for their own attack on a rival, the benefits of divine **Patronage** are only a prayer away.
* The Confederation has access to **Hypertech** that would make even Task Force VALKYRIE drool. Need some sunlight to deal with a coterie of elder vampires? Orbital reflector array, and a nuke if necessary. Mage giving you some problems? Social engineering can put you in the middle of a highly skeptical flash mob at five minutes notice.

The problem of facing beings that wouldn't normally even notice mere humans leads to some similarities in Confederate Endowments. While there's no single thing that all Confederate Endowments can do, they do tend to have enough in common that there's a few tricks most can manage.

* Protection from hostile environments. The Confederation travels beyond the realms we know into places that by their very nature present some form of danger, and would be foolish not to have a way to endure. This can be fairly minor, such as a simple pressure suit; or it can be dedicated protections against realms that corrode the morals of anyone in them, places with toxic physical laws, or areas that contain enough energy to incinerate anything placed in them.
* Disruption or destruction of lower-Tier supernaturals. While they don't like admitting it, many of the godlike beings Confederates face are in some way hindered while in the material world, and rely on lower-Tier or mortal proxies to effect the changes they need. Cut off the snake's body, and the head dies.

Most Confederation-Tier Endowments also have a weakness of some sort. This might be some special requirement that they need met in order to function, something that causes them to fail, or reliance on some empowering being, but there are always drawbacks.

* The Endowment derives from divine will. If the divinity powering the Endowment is killed or convinced to withdraw her favor, the hunters at best need to find a new god.
* The Endowment relies on accurate information. The organization needs to constantly feed it new intel, or using it becomes progressively more difficult and dramatic failures become increasingly dangerous.
* The Endowment requires that rituals be constantly carried out, either around the globe or just at Confederation HQ. This, naturally, requires a steady flow of ritual components and risks the Confederation's cover.

### Becoming a Confederation

There's any of a number of ways to raise an organization to Tier Four. A cell finds a ritual that allows them to cross realities. A Compact draws the attention of the God of the Vigil and is given a stack of thunderbolts. A Conspiracy makes a breakthrough on building their Endowment, and gains tricks that catapult them to Tier Four. While there are countless ways this might happen, perhaps one or two organizations in a hundred years to manage it; climbing the Tiers this high can be a basis for an entire chronicle.

Whatever happens, the next difficulty is for the new Confederation to survive gaining a Tier Four Endowment. Internal strife and civil wars might tear the Confederation apart as their newfound power allows members to realize their ambitions, or external enemies might realize that a new power is rising and nip the "problem" in the bud. The Endowment itself might even be dangerous; if a "learning experience" happens with the supernatural equivalent of a cobalt bomb, the first thing learned is usually the minimum safe distance. Perhaps one in a hundred of the nascent Confederations survive; the remainder are destroyed utterly or broken back to Cells.

Once the Confederation has found and survived their new Endowment, one final challenge exists: the Confederation must master it. The Confederation engages in a special hunt, against an Enemy of Potency 6 or higher. They must take care in this hunt, not just because it is unfamiliar territory, but because it will forever define what the Vigil is for the Confederation: what methods they use, what is and isn't a valid Enemy or acceptable collateral damage, and why they hunt.

## Further Reading

Evolved Major Templates- A forum thread discussing Tier 4 templates for various types of supernatural being.