Start by breaking things down into their component parts. It’s a vital step in every endeavor, whether it involves removing obstacles from the vessel’s path or preparing to build up something new. It’s practiced in a thousand different ways, from taking a sledgehammer to a wall, to sowing discord through a community. The Ship doesn’t let rigidity or conformity get in the way of blazing a new trail.
Breaking things down depends on identifying the connections, the weak points, the sinews that keep it bound together. The crew of the Ship of Theseus are skilled at picking those vulnerabilities out and exploiting them. Sometimes, all it takes is finding the right spot and giving it the slightest push to bring the whole set of dominoes crashing down.
The vampire waits outside the factories for the late shifts, handing out rabble-rousing leaflets. The demon widens a rift between business partners with a folder of incriminating photos. The Sin-Eater stirs ghosts into terrorizing the garrison with figments and phantasms, leaving the soldiers on edge and frightened.
System: A Thesean can send an organization into disarray as long as they are in contact with at least one of that organization’s members. If successful, the vector sows discord and confusion in the organization, choking its coordination and triggering infighting. All rolls to direct the organization’s membership or make use of any Allies, Contacts, Resources, Retainer, Staff, or Status Merits relating to that organization suffer a –2 modifier. For the purposes of Breakdown, an organization is limited in scope to being a unified group with a particular focus or purpose; the vector could target the Ministry of Information, but not an entire national government. It could target a particular drug-pushing street gang, but not a whole city-wide alliance of cartels; a particular university is a legitimate target, but the whole Ivy League is not.
It takes a single scene to enact Breakdown against a targeted organization.
Cost: 1 Willpower
Requirement: A Thesean must be in contact with at least one member of the targeted organization’s members within the current scene
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Subterfuge
Action: Instant; takes one scene
Duration: One chapter
Edges
Changelings, Mages, Mummies, Vampires: Generalized chaos is one thing, but finding the perfect moment to put one’s finger on the scales and push hard is quite another. Theseans with this edge can choose to inflict a different effect with the Breakdown vector; instead of a –2 dice modifier, the first roll made automatically results in a dramatic failure, which does not grant Beats. The –2 dice modifier penalty applies to each subsequent roll that the targeted organization makes thereafter for the chapter of the vector’s effect.
Deviants, Prometheans, Werewolves: Some Theseans prefer a more physical approach to taking things apart. A character with this edge also inflicts the Breakdown dice penalty on attempts to fix any of the physical infrastructure of the targeted organization, and on medical attention given to its members.
Beasts, Sin-Eaters: Society has a lot of dead wood that needs to be cleared away for new growth, but it’s not always about tearing things down as quickly as possible. Rattle the cage enough, and the fractures will spread and collapse the organization from the inside. Theseans with this edge also inflict the vector’s dice penalty on any rolls by organization members to resist breaking points or equivalent rolls.
Demons, Hunters: Chaos can serve as excellent cover for the quick and the cunning. There’s plenty of opportunities to seize a victim amid the distractions. A Thesean with this edge also inflicts the Breakdown penalty on Perception and Investigation dice rolls made by organization members.
Specializations
Autourgics: Remade who embrace their altered state are rare, but several exist within the Ship of Theseus. Their willingness to commit to change endears them to the iconoclasts, and in turn, the faction utilizes their commitment to alteration to shift the building blocks of their targeted organizations. Autourgics throw themselves into their task, driving the Breakdown with zeal enough to increase the organization’s penalty to –3 dice.
Network Zero: The Network’s always on the lookout for opportunities to dive in and discover the truth. Sometimes that means a well-timed cyber-attack under cover of a diver- sion, or squeezing a whistle-blower for the juiciest secrets while they’re on their back foot. A Network Thesean reduces the number of starting Doors by one when initiating in a Social maneuver against a member of an organization targeted by the vector.