Starting new campaign, need some help

[kiergon]

Hey guys, Im starting a new campaign with my usual group (we are in the all cleric game with another GM, this is another game, so we can alternate between GM roles)
I didn´t know where to put it, its going to be a mixture of Millenium and X files, and some other pulp horror fiction setting.
We are using Monte Cook´s World of Darkness, The dark things that want to destroy the world are the old ones from Call of Cthulhu, and we will have more paranormal stuff going on, think Dark Matter.
Anyway, Im starting the campaign in the past, my players will be taking on the role of some legendary figures, namely Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Urshunabbi and Shamat from Akkad, and the pharaoh Khasekhem.
They will try to fight King Nimrod. Nimrod is building the Babel Tower to contact the old ones and become a god. Atop the Babel Tower will have a Tesla coil thing, made of copper. And it will be powered by thousands of ceramic batteries. The players hopefully will stop him.
The world used to have no magic, or very little, and very little supernatural things going on, but because of Nimrod, the fabric of reality will either be teared apart, or just have small holes on it.
If they stop Nimrod, there won´t be many supernatural things going on, until modern times, if they don´t then the intrussion of demons and what have you started back in ancient Babylon.

After they deal with that, My players will be brought back to the present, and now they will create their characters, werewolves, vampires, demons, awakened and mages. They have to stop the apocalypse from coming on 2012. They will fight cultists and what have you to stop them from summoning Azatoth, or something like that and ending the world.


What I need help, is what do you guys think would be cool to happen if they stop Nimrod, what if they don´t? Since Im still on the building phase I can adapt a lot on what will happen in the present.
The players can join several groups who are interested in the Occult. If they want to be more evil, they can join the Thule society, There will be an Millenium group going on too, and then there will be the Hoffman society, who opposses the Thule society but also wants to stop the cultists.
The bad guys will be the illuminatti, or something like that.

[missmvicious]

You have a lot of freedom here. No one expects logic to apply in time-traveling plots, anyway.

However, I'm perplexed by your mythology. You're crossing your histories here--which you're free to do as a DM, so it's difficult to tell what would happen.

However, an interesting concept may be to try Gilgamesh instead of Nimrod. They're histories are similar, and some theorize they were the same person... since Nimrod is not-so-much a proper noun as an insult, meaning "The Rebel." They both tried to build a tower to God. Nimrod did it to honor himself as an equal to God. Gilgamesh did it to pick a fight with God.

To be fair... neither would've worked; they wouldn't have even made it to the lower levels of the upper atmosphere. And even then, God (or the D&D gods, if you prefer to use those) don't live in space... planets do. So the end result could be nihilistically anti-climactic: all of Nimrod's/Gilgamesh's great plans and schemes brought to shame by man's omni-crippling ignorance and intellectual frailty.

Perhaps this realization would be enough to drive someone like Gilgamesh/Nimrod mad. He may be weak and stupid compared to a god... but he's still a force to be reckoned with on earth. Therefore he turns his full wrath on the dominions of man, unleashing his hellish magic-science on the frightened masses, crushing it in his fury. Leaving the future in a barren wasteland a-la Waterworld or Mad Max, respectively (depending on whether you want the future to be an aquatic campaign or desert one). Either would work. It would be a cruel irony that Gilgamesh who sought vengeance on Huwawa (Yahweh?) would destroy the world with water since that's what the Judea-Christian god is famous/infamous for doing. It would also work that Gilgamesh would see to it that Huwawa/Yahweh could never use his weapon of death again and burn the water's of the earth away... leaving the world in dust and ash for several millennia.

Or perhaps, his closest friend, seeing that Gilgamesh/Nimrod has gone too far in his moment of epic disgrace and stabs him in a cinematic "Et tu Brute" moment. But the damage is already done and God/the gods are really peeved now and start unleashing a maelstrom of vengeance. Now it's up to your party to figure out how to appease God/the gods before it/they destroys the world yet again.

I don't know. I'm just spitballing here. You're stirring time-travel, theology, and mythology here in the same stew. According to Hollywood rules, anything goes in that case. You don't have to even bother with historical canon/relevance. Just have fun throwing around some random historical names like they did in the Matrix Trilogy and let the players try to figure out why you picked them, then apply whatever results you want to at the end game.

[onemorelurker]

I'm not familiar with Monte Cooke's WoD, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I think that the main difference to the modern world based on whether Nimrod succeeds could be whether a Masquerade exists. If the players succeed, and the world remains fairly low-magic, then run the present times like the normal WoD where supernatural creatures are unknown to the general population (which, depending on how your apocalypse goes down, could hurt the players' ability to stop the bad guys--never underestimate several million Muggles with guns--and putting them in a position of being tempted to reveal their existence to the world).

If they fail, then monsters and magic have been a major part of the world for thousands of years. You can decide whether to play this as a tolerant "Yeah, monsters can be citizens as long as they don't hurt people," kinda thing, a world where monsters and mages (of which there would have to be a very small number) are persecuted, one where they're the dominant societal class and people without powers are second-class citizens, or something else entirely.

[Synvallius]

If they fail, I think that it would be an interesting idea for them to have to jump ahead in time to several "scenes" throughout history that were of importance, and fight monsters that come out of some rifts. Maybe during those "scenes" they would have to create societies and orders to help them defeat the monsters and close the rifts. These societies and orders then could over time have become the modern day societies, such as the Illuminati, the Thule Society, and others. It would probably be fun for the players to see the groups that they made, in the past, again; and to see how they evolved from their original intent.
Also, I would suggest not making it so that monsters become part of society if they fail, as you would then have to rewrite about 8,000 years of human history because everything would change if their really were Elves, and Dwarves, and wizards, and demons flying around blowing up buildings and forming their own kingdoms. Not that it wouldn't be interesting, but the amount of work that would have to be poured into it, and the fact that half of the societies (or more, probably) that you want to include in the modern portion of the game, would not exist anymore because of the actions of the more powerful mythical/magical creatures.