Agent LAMBERT is a relic from the first true Delta Green campaign I ran back in college for my friends from around 2013-2015. I later wrote him up for the Night at the Opera Case Officer jam, though didn't finish the write up in time. Something of an unfortunate pattern of mine I'm working on.
I got to have the unique pleasure to see my creation brought to life so effectively by Finn as Agent IAGO in his I-Cell campaign for Belli Occulti in which I play Agent IMOGEN and I cannot tell you what an amazing feeling it is to get to see one of your creations so perfectly brought to life, especially when you get to interact with him as one of your own PCs. In fact, I owe it to Finn for conceptualizing Philip Seymour Hoffman as his face claim. I'm willing to post the whole thing now as Finn has already been able to make use of the hooks I listed in his write up, so nothing to spoil for my fellow players.
Who is Edward Donoghue/Agent LAMBERT?
Depends who you ask. To his colleagues in the Treasury department he is a semi-mythical wrathful deity, an extremely experienced law unto himself that is more often spoken of than seen or interacted with. For those that have interacted with him, it has rarely been a pleasant experience, though it can be fruitful for one’s career, assuming he didn’t meet them just to strike them down.
To the Program, he’s an over the hill relic that has managed to make himself very useful in their D5 Office of Logistics. A fat, bitter bureaucrat not so slowly drinking himself to death in his office and his shambolic Arlington home. Barely worth remembering. No one except for the Director of Logistics has any idea of his “extracurricular” activities.
To Program Director of Logistics Dana Shelton, he’s both a potent and dangerous asset. He is extremely skilled both at the acquisition of and surreptitious transfer of funds, a magician who can make money appear and disappear as needed. That’s how she justifies him to the rest of the Program. His real value is as a ruthless case officer running deniable and semi-self sufficient domestic spy rings. A self aware and willingly deniable asset for limiting the worst excesses of the Program and March Technologies.
To A-Cell and the Outlaws, he’s a goddamn candyman. One of their best cell leaders and an extremely effective source of funds and material with a willingness to lend material aid to other cells (although with an implicit owing of a favor). He has nationwide networks of cops and crooks with no idea of what they’ve actually become accessory to, and sometimes no idea what they’ve got buried in their junkyard or why they’re knocking over a truckload of salt.
To his assets and Agents, he’s a capricious deity delivering commandments from on high, one who gives much with one hand and demands just as much tribute with the other.
And if you were to ask him, and he were to answer honestly, he’s a revenant. Just a ghost that can’t move on. He divorced his wife and doesn't speak to his children, and they don’t know why. But you won’t ask him, and he wouldn’t answer anyway.
Services Rendered:
LAMBERT is an Old Hand at this thing of ours. His involvement dates back to roughly 1991, brought into the fold by one of Fairfield’s old hands in the DIA who saw the need for someone with real bureaucratic pull. By the time of Fairfield’s assassination that old friend and several newer friends were dead, and Donoghue had managed to rise into a position in the Treasury Department that made him too valuable to risk for field work. He was all in on the formation of the cell structure Delta Green adopted through the rest of the 90s in their war with MJ-12 and the mythos at large as a very competent cell leader. His conspiratorial mindset and belief in the power of networks of debts and favors served him well, and his skill in building networks of contacts and assets both criminal and civil managed to make him one of the few Delta Green agents whose career was consistently on an upward trajectory.
Agent LAMBERT, 1994-2000
After the events of February 2001, LAMBERT played his cards close to his chest. Accepting a position as a program manager in D5 (formerly Project AQUARIUS) while maintaining his contacts with those who would become the Outlaws as well as his own networks. After September 11 and the dawn of the Global War on Terror, LAMBERT found his position in the Department of the Treasury to be of even greater importance than before. He also came to the conclusion that this supposedly reformed “MAJESTIC” could never actually be trusted to do what needed to be done, and so reactivated his own status as a Cell Leader by offering the re-organized A Cell a deal too sweet to pass up on. Access to his intelligence and financial networks.
Agent LAMBERT 2000-2019
This period would mark the height of his operational and professional capabilities. Arguably it’s the best era to make use of him, as he’s more than willing and able to offer Agents of the Program deniable means of hitting at things their leadership tells them to back off of. He’s working himself to death for about 16 years but is still managing to hold it together. Come 2019, the decisions he’s made and the coping mechanisms he’s adopted truly begin to take their toll.
Agent LAMBERT, 2019-Present
He has three primary intelligence sources, A Cell, his own networks, and Director of Logistics Dana Shelton. A Cell and his networks provide leads on the preternatural in general, while Shelton offers intel on Program and March Technologies activities. LAMBERT's own network also provides plenty of more mundane intelligence that could be of use to Law enforcement and even intelligence agencies, which is something he's willing to judiciously trade for favors or resources.
Using LAMBERT:
LAMBERT is a genuinely acerbic and unpleasant individual, but he’s competent, he’s committed, and he won’t fuck over his Agents unless they really make it necessary. Think of him as something between Gunther Bachman from a Most Wanted Man and the Mattress Man from Punch Drunk Love. He can be easily slotted into 3 different eras of Delta Green, though his style should also be very strategic and concerned with cost. He can introduce Agents to a wide variety of characters, above the board and below, but will also expect his Agents to always be on the lookout for opportunities to acquire “operational funds” and to suborn people and organizations into useful assets.
He can be cagey about details but is as upfront with his Agents as he possibly can be. He takes great pains to insulate himself with knowledge of the unnatural, focusing primarily on identifying vectors, cults, interlocks, etc and how they can best be dismantled. He recommends the same to his Agents, as he believes that sort of occult knowledge is generally counter-productive to operational capabilities and best left for “specialists” who can always be made to disappear.
He prefers to meet in person and to use telephones and electronic communications as little as possible. He has an ungodly amount of airline miles with nearly every airliner and he can justify last minute travel cross the country for an hour long meeting before flying back fairly easily. He has much less oversight than he really ought to.
On first interactions with LAMBERT, his severe alcoholism should be well concealed, and the impression given to Agents is that he’s truly a hard ass. As time goes on, cracks should appear but the revelation of how truly badly he’s abusing his body with alcohol should come as an actual shock. Scenarios in which that occurs are detailed further below under Personal Matters.
Fronts, Safe-houses, and Friendlies:
At this point, there isn’t a major American city in which LAMBERT doesn’t have at least one safe-house and a few contacts he can call upon for Agents, though the quality and reliability there certainly varies. LAMBERT at this point is beyond worrying about his reputation, and he will never sugarcoat what the Agents can expect regarding these resources and will tell them what they need to know to not blow it. He has three metrics he’ll run by the players regarding each contact; Clarity, Reliability, and Capability.
- Clarity: What does the contact know, who do they think LAMBERT and the Agents are, are they aware of the unnatural and if so to what extent, what questions should they already have the answers to and what questions might they be expected to ask.
- Reliability: To what extent can this asset be trusted? How hard can they be leaned on? Are they fully willing participants or are they debtors?
- Capability: What can they do for you and how well can they do it.
Examples:
- Rocky’s Pawn & Jewelry and A#1 Towing Services:
- Eisenhower Salvage: A junkyard where things can be stored, and bodies crushed into tiny little cubes,
- Patriot Dry Cleaning/Sungyon Kim: A good place to get industrial grade chemicals. Has contracts with the state and federal government, meaning it has access to a variety of uniforms. Run by an evangelical christian and rabid anti-communist.
- Richard Muñoz: Mobile off the books medical and disposal services
- Frankie M: Gangster, drug dealer and member of the Dixie Mob
- Dr Cindy Moretz: Psychiatrist without scruples
- 24/7 Easy Wash: Agents will get a key and an address to a self service car wash, in the machine room they will find a trapdoor leading down into a green box. It’s also a good place to clean the blood off/out of your car. The owner has connections to some chop shops and car theft rings.
Handlers should feel free to invent their own contacts and safe houses as well as the complications and limitations as they see fit.
Quid Pro Quo:
Things LAMBERT might task the Agents with that other Case Officers and Cell Leaders might not
- Room Service: LAMBERT will call to tell the Agents to get to room 883 of some nice hotel. He keeps it brief, quick, and vague, just saying “the guy in the room needs a favor, just do what he needs you to do, don’t ask questions, and be quick about it.” Upon arriving at the room, they will be greeted by a naked man covered in blood who will agitatedly point to the bathroom saying “He said you people take care of this shit, so take care of it.” Inside the bathroom is a man bound in duct tape thrashing around in the bathtub, blood from his slit throat is everywhere. He should be dead, he’s not. SAN 1/1d6
- Funerary Rites: Agents are to go to a tenement apartment to pick up 3 urns filled with a slick, blueish ash and are to drop them off in the trunk of a derelict car in the woods. If opened, one urn will contain several gold teeth.
- Early Release: Someone landed in police custody, get them out.
- Support Your Local Critic: There’s a small art exhibition at a new gallery. Slash those paintings
Personal Matters:
There is a very good chance that the Agents will be brought into more personnel matters for LAMBERT, something that brings both burdens and benefits. This could be down to them proving to be reliable, or just be the closest assets at hand when the need comes. He’ll send them a priority message and a rough approximation of his location.
- Calling from lockup because he got pulled over and breathalyzed. Still as coherent as ever, but humbled. He’ll reimburse the agents for bailing him out.
- The Agents find him in a hotel room half naked and delirious because he thought he could try sobriety again and like every time before, he was wrong. He’s in the throes of the delirium tremens and needs the Agents to get him through it. The easiest way is to get him liquor.
- The Agents find him crumpled in a public bathroom drinking a now half empty 32 oz bottle of hand sanitizer he stole from a desk. He slurs "Sssssorry, I ssstarttted remembering....I has hhha had a family y'know.”
Bonds:
Not a fucking one, by design
Severe Alcoholism (he’s at a point that his alcoholism is only apparent when he’s sober)
Addiction: Smoking (to the point it’s starting to stain his skin)
Suicidal Ideation
Spite Requires Survival
Operational Security is the Only Law
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