The Brotherhoood of the Road: A Delta Green Element

The Brotherhood of the Road 

By Marc “grandini” Dilazzaro
Special thanks to Tophat

Cars in a circle, little lamb in the middle

All the headlights, so bright, he ain't cast a shadow off
Sick - SALEM

 

 The ritual is always the same, but the place and people almost never are. Six cars formed in a circle facing one another in a lonely, abandoned place off the highway, each car’s driver standing to the side of their idling vehicle. It is night, the headlights come together to form a fully lit circle, in the center of which is a bound individual, often a teen runaway, but not always. The Man manifests to take what is his. He does not cast a shadow.

Operation HUMBUG Part 1

If this corrective effort fails, millions of human bodies will indeed inevitably be chopped to pieces and chewed up by iron and gas. But even the habitues of the chthonic forces of terror will not learn one-tenth of what nature promises its less idly curious, but more sober children, who possess  in technology not a fetish of doom but a key to happiness. They will demonstrate this sobriety the moment they refuse to acknowledge the next  war as an incisive magical turning point, and instead discover in it the image of  everyday actuality. And they will demonstrate it when they use this discovery to transform this war into civil war and thereby perform that Marxist trick which alone is a match for this sinister runic humbug.
-Walter Benjamin, Theories of German Fascism (1930)

With Halina Esfahani (aka SHIELD MAIDEN) being remanded to "recommended" psych ward by her parents, Peter DeVille (Zonnenrand) electing to be a cooperative witness in his own trial, and their "mass shooting as mass ritual" plot being thoroughly thwarted, Operation OPAQUE LENS can be considered a resounding success. But there's more to this case than two lost souls choosing stochastic terrorism. 
 

Shortly before Halina's hard drive fried itself, a mocking notepad message typed itself on the monitor, indicating that parties unknown had full access to her machine remotely. Fraught interrogations indicated that Halina was a "consort" of an online, right wing occultic milieu calling itself the "Higher Order." One with more rigorous OPSEC and cybersecurity than most, and one with access to Real Occult Power through the amassing of a digital library of tomes. 

Though OPSEC protocols are only as good as the willingness to follow them.  Halina, or "Klaus Barbi Girl" to use her online moniker, maintained a telegram chat with another member of the Higher Order going by "Serrano's Shadow." Though he did not reveal his name or the name of his band, he intimated to Halina that he'd be playing at the Spahn in Culver City in early May. If H-Cell can positively ID "Serrano's Shadow," they could potentially get access to the Higher Order's custom server "The Great Library" without arousing suspicion. Well, that's the ideal, at least.

Posted May 3, 2024

Operation OPAQUE LENS Part 2: Friends Are Where You Find Them

April 17th, 2021
Odessa, Texas

"There died a myriad
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilisation".

 
So goes Ezra Pound’s poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberlay, a poem army veteran Steven Ortiz liked so much he made it his screen name. From what has thus far been gathered from his writings and activities since getting back from Afghanistan in 2016, Ortiz was searching for either meaning or community, or whatever passed for either online, but when he died screaming in a van outside Odessa, showering those who gave him a ride in blood and brain matter, he was definitely running from something. 

H-Cell knows a few things. They know Ortiz went to visit two online friends in Globe, Arizona. They know they were called Zonnenrand and SHIELD MAIDEN. They know they talked about a ritual. They know Ortiz brought an armalite that saw action in Vietnam. They know he didn’t leave with it. They know something scared Ortiz real bad and that he was desperately trying to get back home to Birmingham. They know he didn’t make it far.

And they know that “Zonnenrand” just saw Ortiz’s telegram account come back online, and that he’s hoping his friend is okay. 

Saturday, April 6, 2024 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Operation OPAQUE LENS Part 1: No Love for the Lonely

April 16, 2021

West Texas

 

 A van of young people are arrested outside Odessa, Texas under suspicion of the murder of one Steven Ortiz. A former army veteran, Steven Ortiz’s headless corpse was found inside the van with what appears to be a swastika ritually carved into his chest. The arresting officer reported, “it was like his head just exploded” despite there being no firearms or even evidence of a firearm having been discharged in or at the vehicle. 

This investigation will send the Agents down a rabbit hole of occult right-wing terrorism, wayward youths, information warfare, deranged ideologies, niche communities, fringe scholarship, and an anonymous online cult binding all these elements together. Over the course of the campaign, the Agents will monitor and potentially infiltrate this community in an effort to model its structure, unmask its leaders, and destroy it, hopefully with minimal collateral damage. 

This is a playtest for a campaign using a new online threat group frahnk and I have developed. It’s gonna deal with some really ugly modern far-right ideology, occultism, and internet culture and will also deal with themes of self harm, alienation, racism, and mass murder.

Kali Yuga Now: Master Post

 

Kali Yuga Now was (and hopefully will be) a campaign I started running in spring of 2024 until the start of August 2024 when I ended up becoming too busy to keep up with it. It was an exercise in play testing a threat group Frahnk and I had been working on for quite sometime. I do hope to return to it, as do my players. It deals with some really, really bleak material far-right online culture and occultism. I'm honestly very proud of it, and I recently realized that the mission briefings that were all archived on Night at the Opera basically function as short play reports, so I've decided to reproduce them on this blog.

Dear readers, I present to you Kali Yuga Now.

Treat Yourself: Optional Rules for Home Scenes

 Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure as hell can make it easier to come by. The Treat Yourself rules allow Agents to spend money to improve certain home scene actions, including 'Back to Nature' (AH 78) and 'Personal Motivation' (AH 79). If an Agent spends an Unusual expense, they gain a 20% bonus to the SAN test involved in the home scene. This represents significant spending to indulge themselves in the effort.

If an Agent spends a Major expense, they gain a 40% bonus to the SAN test involved in the home scene. This may represent a more permanent/lasting improvement such as a new hot tub or modification to a recreational vehicle. As such it may give +20% to the next applicable home scene action as well. 

A Major expense could also represent an Agent modifying some aspect of their home life to appease their neuroses (such as building a bunker or ensuring they have a room where no shadows can be cast). This, of course, could cause strain with any Bonds they happen to live with, and Charisma checks should be made, potentially with negative modifiers depending on how disruptive the change is. 

A NOTE ON ACQUISITION AND EXPENSES: 
Don’t view items or even money in specific dollar amounts, but rather in the roughly abstracted Expense Categories on page 84 of the Agent’s Handbook. 5 Standard Expenses make up 1 Unusual Expense. 5 Unusual Expenses make up 1 Major Expense. 1 Major Expense equals 25 Standard Expenses. The lesson to take away here is each Expense Level is worth 5 Units of the Expense Level preceding it. 

WAYS AND MEANS:
Agents can, of course, use the 'Spending Your Own Money' (AH 89) acquisition rules to add the Treat Yourself modifier to their home scene. Though that's so boring. Using the Units of Expense model I illustrated above in conjunction with this mechanic can be used to encourage players to try and acquire Units of Expense during play, which can manifest in multiple ways, all corrupt. An Agent could attempt to steal from the target of their investigation, they could sell something from the green box, they could solicit or accept a bribe. They’re likely playing a federal official who is already abusing their authority for the "greater good,” let them take a slide on down that slippery slope. Hell, encourage it. 

If so desired, a Handler can also use a truncated form of the 'Squandering Illicit Cash' (AH 91) to see if the sudden splurge arouses suspicions of a bond or the IRS. I'd recommend on not invoking this rule the first time a player uses the Treat Yourself option in this way. Let them get a taste of it first, then start applying pressure. 

 

Special thanks to Spookum over on the Night at the Opera discord for his input. It helped simplify this immensely.  

 

  

Delta Green NPC: Matthew Rockyhara

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