Synopsis
The game currently has 9 chapters,2 inter-chapters (one between chapters 5 and 6 and one between chapters 7 and 8),and a prologue,each taking place in a different year throughout history. [4]
The player controls Vertin the Timekeeper,an arcanist from the St. Pavlov Foundation and the only person known to be naturally immune to the Storm. Vertin also possesses a watch that alerts her when the Storm is 24 hours away,as well as a suitcase that,much like the TARDIS in Doctor Who,has much more space on the inside than its external appearance would suggest. As she can thus experience the Storm and its effects unharmed,Vertin and her team work throughout different eras of time to prevent the Manus from exploiting the Storm,and to investigate clues on how to prevent the phenomenon. [5]
Prologue
The game begins in the year 1966,showing a 15-year-old girl named Regulus hosting a pirate radio show with her partner,APPLe,on a ship,where she has abducted two Foundation investigators as retaliation for them attempting to get her to register with the Foundation as an arcanist. Regulus speaks to her listeners and criticizes the British government,but is interrupted as a Manus Vindictae ship attacks and sinks her own vessel. Vertin and Sonetto,who have been tracking the missing Foundation investigators and witness these events,rescue Regulus,APPLe,and the investigators. Vertin then explains to Regulus that the Storm will fall within the next fifty minutes,and brings Regulus and APPLe into her suitcase,which has natural immunity against the Storm (though only for arcanists),as Sonetto and the Foundation investigators return to the Foundation's shelter. After this,time is reversed to the year 1929.
Chapter 1
Vertin,having explained her role to Regulus,has to defend the suitcase from a group of children. Coming back inside,she finds Regulus knocked out by a strange fog near a "lake" in the middle of the suitcase,seemingly made up of the same liquid as the Storm's rain. Reaching into the lake and touching a spinning wheel,Vertin somehow summons Sonetto. Regulus finally agrees to register at the Foundation,and is invited to its research branch,the Laplace Scientific Computing Center. There,she meets X,a scientist specializing in Goldberg machines and member of a secret unaffiliated organization hidden within the Center,called the Institutum Lorentz,which works to find the true origin of the Storm. X shares Lorentz' leading theory with Regulus,which is that the Storm was caused by an "Original Butterfly" in ancient times.
During 1929 on St. Valentine's Day,in Chicago,Vertin and Sonetto are instructed to stop a group of humans from performing a massacre against arcanists. Upon arriving,they find a girl in a feather dress named Schneider shooting the humans before the events are supposed to occur. They stop her from killing the last human,a man by the name of Adam Heyer,however he shoots himself after he realizes that the people who saved him are arcanists.
After talking further with Schneider,they learn that she is a young Italian-American mob member being housed by Manus Vindictae,with her agreeing to do whatever they tell her in exchange for protection and a place to stay. Schneider,after fighting them,leaves them the address of the Walden,a speakeasy bar. However,in the process of heading there,they are separated inside a forest that has long been burned-down by ghostly creatures;Sonetto meets Sotheby,a young arcanist alchemist from a wealthy British family who is on her way to the Walden,while Vertin and APPLe encounter a mysterious druid named Druvis III,who gives them an invitation to the speakeasy. Talking with Druvis,Vertin realizes that the stock exchange is about to crash,something which in history should only have happened months later. Vertin deduces that the Manus seems to be changing history,and asks the Foundation for reinforcements;upon arriving at the Walden,they find a few dozen people inside it gambling money on duels. The Manus member in charge and bartender,Forget Me Not,is aware of Vertin's identity;he forces her to fight Schneider in a duel. Schneider is revealed to be the adoptive arcanist daughter of a poor human family. Their application to escape the Storm was rejected by the Foundation,and so Schneider joined the Manus after they pledged to support them instead;Vertin offers her help herself.
Meanwhile,Sonetto and Sotheby crash their car in the Walden's back wall after Sotheby feeds her driver an experimental potion. Finding a strange labyribnth,Sonetto detects a human prisoner trapped behind the walls. Forget Me Not reveals that Manus Vindictae are utilizing their influence during the Prohibition via the Walden to accelerate the crash of the stock market and by extension the Storm,and begins pressuring the bar patrons to join them by donning mind-controlling Manus masks. Everyone escapes into the labyrinth;Vertin and Schneider reunite with Sonetto and Sotheby,and they free the prisoner who is revealed to be Schneider's sister Marian. Unbeknownst to Schneider,Marian had been kidnapped by the Manus,and their pretense that they'd help Schneider find her allowed them to secure her cooperation.
Seeing this,Schneider agrees to join Vertin in fighting Druvis III,who is revealed to be working for the Manus as well. Sotheby's bodyguards,the Foundation squad and Schneider's fellow mob members join forces to remove the car from the back wall. Vertin and Schneider hold back Druvis while the wall collapses,separating them once more from Sonetto as she attempts to provide aid to the civilians with everyone else who escaped.
Chapter 2
Sonetto escapes with Sotheby and Marian in Sotheby's car,intending to mount a rescue operation for the Timekeeper and Schneider. Inside the Walden,the two are brought to Arcana,leader of Manus Vindictae. She asks that Vertin join the Manus,before forcing her to answer three questions (about the Foundation "creating the Storm",the Foundation kidnapping arcanist children to experiment on them,and arcanists' living conditions),torturing Schneider if she deems Vertin's answers unsatisfactory. Vertin agrees to join them to stop the torture;following this,Arcana uses her slime to trap Vertin inside an illusion,making her repeatedly shoot Schneider with Schneider's own gun. Druvis III begins to exhibit doubts about the Manus.
Meanwhile,the societal unrest corresponding to the market crash causes the Storm to progress further;people begin to hallucinate that money and gold bars are food as a result of the Storm Syndrome,while finding real food inedible. Hundreds of thousands fall ill or die,filling up the hospitals. Finding her human butler,Mr Karson,and her staff also affected,Sotheby begins working on a hallucinogen that would allow people to eat normal food despite the Syndrome. A grievously-wounded Schneider,in the meantime,is revealed to have survived Vertin's shot to the heart as her heart is on the right;Vertin brings her medicine in secret,and Schneider's "lifeless" body is sent back to Sotheby's manor to show them Vertin joined the Manus.
The burned forest near the Walden is revealed to be Druvis' old family domain;Forget Me not enlists her to allow that vast territory to serve as an emergency field hospital for all the people affected by the Storm Syndrome,as all the standard hospitals are full. Vertin and Sonetto separately find out that the Manus' plan is to pretext helping the thousands of patients to steal supplies from the era,in order to fund their operation once the Storm has passed.
Sonetto,Sotheby and APPLe are joined by X and Regulus,who have been sent as reinforcements. While intercepting the supplies intended for the Manus,they also start trying to break through the defensive ritual inside the Forest concealing the Manus',and the field hospital's,presence. Forget Me Not,meanwhile,reveals that the potion he prepared with the stated intent of helping the affected humans (similar to Sotheby's hallucinogen) is in actuality an explosive alcohol solution designed to kill them en masse.
Journalists who had come to cover the field hospital recognize Druvis,and her story is finally revealed:the last heiress of the Weyerhaeuser forestry company who had a gift with trees,she was opposed to her family's deforestation plans within their domain. As they were out inspecting the forest,a vagrant firefighter burned it down in an attempt to salvage the career he had lost as a result of the Great Depression,killing Druvis' family. Made a scapegoat by the popular press who portrayed her use of arcanum as black magic,she then joined Manus Vindictae when they promised her they'd help her find the culprit. With Vertin's convincing,she finally decides to look to the future instead of the past,tranquil in the knowledge that her forest will grow back,and definitively turns her back on Forget Me Not and the Manus.
The rest of the group finally break through;they attempt to provide aid to the remaining civilians while fighting against Forget Me Not and an avatar of Arcana. As Forget Me Not escapes,Vertin,her companions,and the remaining surviving humans take refuge in Vertin's suitcase while the Storm arrives,with Sotheby preparing a "last meal" utilizing her finally perfected hallucinogen. Unfortunately Vertin's suitcase can only protect arcanists,and so Marian and Mr Karson are both reversed. Schneider informs Vertin that she was never a real arcanist,with her gun merely being an arcane tool. She hugs Vertin and asks her not to forget her,before being reversed herself.
Chapter 3
After the conclusion of Chapter 2,Vertin becomes distraught and falls unconscious,after which she is put into an induced coma inside a St. Pavlov Foundation medical facility. The game,via her dreams,then shows a prologue of the current events involving Vertin's childhood at the Foundation when she was nearing 12 years old.
Vertin was a student of the St. Pavlov Foundation,but,like all other students,was not allowed to visit the outside world. Unbeknownst to her,this was because of the Storm outside having the possibility of reversing students,and the Foundation feared that anyone knowing of the existence of the Storm could cause unnecessary panic. It was known to the teachers that Vertin had snuck outside during the Storm and survived unharmed,but they were afraid to investigate as this may draw unnecessary attention to the Storm.
Vertin,one day,asks the Principal about the Storm. She is immediately jailed overnight for it. In the jail,she meets another student,The Ring,and together,having found Manus Vindictae pamphlets dropped near the school mentioning the Storm and the outside world (with the goal of recruiting children from the school),they mount a daring operation with other students. At the annual Parade Ceremony,they sing a version of the school anthem that has Manus-aligned lyrics,and are brutally repressed,with Vertin being knocked unconscious.
Seeing that the Foundation refuses to enlighten them,Vertin gathers her fellow rebellious classmates once more to attempt to break out of the school,as they believe that ongoing maintenance would grant an opportunity to sneak through unlocked doors. However,Constantine,the Vice-President of the Foundation,who was made aware of their dissatisfaction after the ceremony,tells one of the students,Mesmer Jr,about the truth of the Storm,in an attempt to pressure her to betray them. Mesmer Jr tells her their full plan to escape,begging her to help them:instead,Constantine decides to sacrifice the students to ensure Vertin's cooperation. She deliberately reschedules the maintenance to the date the Storm arrives,causing all of the students involved to be reversed as they escape,except for Vertin. After these events,Vertin is approached by Madam Z,a high-ranking Foundation official and Constantine's second-in-command,and asked to become the Timekeeper.
Chapter 4
The game then goes back to the present. While Vertin is asleep,several Foundation employees,in addition to Regulus and APPLe,who Vertin had met previously and introduced to the Foundation,meet and discuss their desire to make the Foundation protect the interests of Arcanists as well as humans,and believe that Vertin had only been hospitalized because of a fear that Vertin would fail to comply with the Foundation policies after experiencing more trauma.
They successfully executed a plan to cause protests in the Foundation building regarding the events with Vertin,allowing them to break into her hospital room to awaken her,then successfully pass a new Foundation policy to give Vertin the independence to investigate on her own,bring back new Arcanists without prior Foundation approval,and require less Foundation oversight and regulation.
The Foundation then forms a team of investigators called Team Timekeeper,with Vertin as the team's leader,Sonetto as the team's chief assistant,and the additional investigators Regulus,APPLe,Druvis III,and Sotheby,an alchemist who had assisted in helping survivors during Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
Chapter 5
Following the Storm of 1929,time has reversed back to the year 1913. Vertin and the newly independent Team Timekeeper's first mission is to investigate a Manus base that is immune to the Storm in order to collect samples of a particle they believe may be linked to the immunity,called "asymmetrical nuclide R";but their navigation system malfunctions and they are sent off-course to a nearby inhabited island in the Aegean Sea.
Vertin is awoken on the beach by a girl named 37,who tells Vertin that her watch is telling the wrong time and that it is actually 2007,leaving Vertin shocked and suspecting this island may be related to the Manus base.
After meeting 37's people,the Apeironites - an isolated cult based on Pythagorean beliefs that function and stratify people based on numbers and who are convinced that everything in the world can be described and predicted through these - further discussion reveals that the island's inhabitants use mathematics to predict each Storm. [6] Regulus,branded an irrational number,is thrown in jail,and while there apparently hallucinates a mathematical proof of the existence of the dwarf planet Ceres,which appears to her in her cell.
The group is invited to a mathematics ceremony on the island,and they agree to attend,having sworn an oath to respect the islanders' many confusing rules. During the ceremony,Sonetto notices Arcana among the islanders and reflexively attacks,causing 6,the leader of the island,to propose that Sonetto be sentenced to death for breaking one of their main rules of silence. Vertin petitions that Sonetto should be given leniency and is forced to participate in an absurdist debate based mainly on sophistry and superficial rhetoric to defend her position. Struggling at first,she is finally helped by 37 who reveals that Vertin's number is zero,ending the debate. Both Arcana and Vertin's teams are required to wear a bracelet that will kill them if they attempt to fight further. The team regroups later to discuss the presence of dead Manus soldiers across the island,who they suspect may be sacrificing themselves.
In order to "prove" that zero is in fact Vertin's number,37 volunteers to travel into the heart of the island to speak to the elusive being at the center of their beliefs,Apeiron,accompanied by Vertin. There,Vertin discovers that the caves are full of asymmetrical nuclide R,and the fog made of the particle (which is similar to that near the lake in her suitcase,and also affects the mind) knocks out 37. Vertin fights alone against a being summoned by the sacrificed Manus cultists. Upon leaving the cave with 37,they find that human war planes have somehow made their way to the island,and 37 is hit directly by a bomb from one of them.
Chapter 6
Meanwhile,as the St. Pavlov Foundation finds more evidence that the Manus can survive the Storm,they decide to send investigators Greta Hoffman and Marcus to Vienna to follow another lead on Manus Vindictae. After arriving and interacting with the locals,the two start investigating an art museum curated by a strange man named Heinrich. They find an opera singer named Isolde displaying a painting named The Salvation,which is the last surviving painting of her brother,who died from self-immolation.
During the investigation,Marcus meets a therapist named Kakania and gets distracted talking with her. Hoffman leaves to pursue Heinrich,as he had been acting suspiciously during the auction,and instructs Marcus to stay where she is. Marcus then saves the therapist from entering a deliberately rigged duel that would have caused her death. Kakania talks with Marcus for some time,and then Marcus leaves to meet with Hoffman. Marcus and Hoffman then find a newspaper showing that many politicians and prominent figures have been assassinated and that World War 1 will arrive sooner than it had before the Storm.
Kakania goes on to treat Isolde,who had come to Kakania with symptoms of trauma due to her brother's suicide. During the session,Isolde realizes that her brother had convinced her to fire a revolver at him to end his pain during the fire. The shock of realizing this causes Isolde to become more unstable,and when she leaves,she meets Heinrich,who reveals himself to be a Manus Vindicate follower. She is manipulated by him to join the Manus,and her first assignment is to kill a Foundation member.
Kakania is outraged by this and demands Isolde to leave the Manus. Isolde attempts to prove her loyalty to Kakania by killing Heinrich,who Hoffman and Marcus had been following at this point because they wanted to interrogate him for information regarding the Storm. Hoffman attempts to stop the shooting but fails to do so,and is hit by the bullets herself,leading to her death.
With very little time left before the Storm,Hoffman demands Marcus to leave and not seek medical attention for her,and to instead pursue Isolde and Kakania to ask what they know. Marcus uses her Arcane skill on Isolde and sees a memory Isolde's brother had experienced,showing Arcana displaying the ritual for Storm immunity,and then they conclude that the painting The Salvation was likely based on it. Marcus returns to the Foundation with Isolde and Kakania and informs them of the ritual she saw.
Chapter 7
The researchers at the St. Pavlov Foundation suffer a wide range of casualties as they attempt to test the ritual sent by Marcus. While performing it would always affect the person casting the ritual in some way,in 99.5% of cases,it would either kill or seriously injure the performer,and no indication existed on whether it affected Storm immunity.
Meanwhile,the people on the island find that they are no longer protected from the Storm,as Manus Vindictae deliberately leaked information regarding the island,and soldiers from surrounding nations begin bombing the island to lay claim to it amidst the accelerated start of World War I. 37 and Vertin enter a cave that island mythology claims will lead believers to a god named Apeiron who will answer any question their followers ask. The answer they received came in the form of a long string of numbers,which,due to her faith,37 believed they could decode.
Meanwhile,the destruction caused by the war causes many islanders to lose their faith Arcana convinces some of the island's inhabitants that their god has forsaken them and allowed the island to be destroyed by humans,leading them to join Manus Vindictae. Upon returning from the cave and learning of this,Vertin and her allies carry out a previously decided-upon plan to use an Arcane skill to teleport Arcana to a military base to detonate a thermobaric bomb directly on top of Arcana and kill her,preventing further interference with the island.
37 then asks Vertin and her team to contact the Foundation with information on what they learned. After an exchange of information regarding the experiments,37 believes that the string of numbers they received from Aperion would fit a mathematical formula for creating the geometric shape of a knot that had several circles in it. Upon further testing,they were able to replicate the ritual without serious side effects and created a device that would replicate the ritual automatically by harvesting Arcane energy from the Storm,allowing both humans and Arcanists to survive during the Storm,but does not prevent time from being reversed.
Chapter 8
Team timekeeper goes down to Brazil to follow a lead about a writer named Urd and meets General Igor and Zeno. Igor schedules them on a cruise to a veterans residency and sends his daughter Lopera to protect them,but not before Sotheby recognizes a photo with her butler which was taken by the Storm of 1929. On the ship,Vertin finds Anjo Nala,a succubus who she had met earlier. The ship is then raided by Apostle’s Brotherhood members,an extremist group that is closely connected to Manus Vindictae. The ship explodes and capsizes,splitting Vertin and Anjo from Sotheby and Lopera.
Anjo Nala and Vertin drift upon a favela,where they meet a blind doctor going by Dr. Dores. Dr. Dores nurses Vertin back to health but before she awoke,Dores is taken by the Apostle’s brotherhood. Vertin continues heading toward the veteran's residency,where she discovers Dr. Dores identity as Urd.
Meanwhile,Sotheby and Lopera are discovered by Mr. Duncan. Sotheby,upon waking up,immediately recognizes Mr. Duncan as her butler. The group goes to reconnect with Vertin but not before defeating members of the Apostle’s Brotherhood.
Back at Zeno base,Lilya has a conversation with Igor where he reveals Arcana survived the explosion. Lilya is then arrested by Zeno rebels and the rebels slaughter the remaining loyalists. Lilya escapes and goes to warn Vertin. Zeno rebels arrive at the veteran's residence to capture Anjo and uses her pendant to pit her against Vertin. This backfires as the pendant is destroyed and Anjo repels the rebels. Lopera chases after Dr. Dores,where she finds the region's leader of the Apostle's Brotherhood. She battles with him and wins,leaving with Dr. Dores. Zeno rebels arrive and shoot Lopera with a tranquilizer bullet before taking Dr. Dores. Mr. Duncan finds Lopera and takes her back to the Foundation.
Back at the foundation,Mr. Duncan is confirmed to be Sotheby’s butler. The Foundation announces the betrayal of Igor to Manus Vindictae and the identity of Dr. Dores as Urd. Vertin searches through records,theorizing about the nature of the “Storm",ending with a hypothesis that those who are “reversed”by it don’t die.
