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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Delta Green Cell Leader/Case Officer: Agent LAMBERT

 

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. 

Delta Green Campaign: Our Ladies of Sorrow [Part 2]

 

The team reconvenes at the breakfast to plan out the day. HORATIO comes in late, smelling of cigarettes and with a half drunk 4Loko in his hand. JETHRO and HORATIO volunteer to canvas the other residents of the Three Sisters, and to see if they can take a look at the sealed apartments of the 4th and 5th floors. WALLADA decides to do some research on the Three Sisters Building while she waits for a response from Kurt Winter. QASIM and Bravie will head to secure the Green Box before QASIM meets with the coroner to take custody of Ryder's corpse. 

HORATIO and JETHRO get to the Three Sisters a little bit before 7 am and decide to make their presence known to the building superintendent Todd Beach. The Agents inform him of their investigation into the death of Frank Ryder and say that they'll need access to the sealed floors. Clearly torn between being intimidated by two officers of the law and his employer, Todd Beach demurs and says he'll have to call the building's owner first and that they should talk to her. HORATIO enthusiastically agrees through gritted teeth as the balding man retreats back into his apartment. 

Soundtrack of Our Ladies of Sorrow

Book One, House of Shadows:

• General Ambience: Stars of the lid - Austin Texas Mental Hospital (Part 1, 2, 3)

• Three Sisters Ambience: Kreng - Tinseltown
  
  
• Three Sisters Sealed Rooms: Stars of the Lid - Central Texas
  
  
• Maddie Mercer's Apartment: Sisters of Mercy - Temple of Love
  
  
• The Cemetery near Lake Calaveras: William Basinski - Silent Night 
  
  
• The Green Box: William Basinski - A Red Score in Tile
  
  
• The Song from the 5th Floor: Amelita Galli-Curci - Solveig's Song
  
  
• Primary Sonic Inspiration: Thom Yorke - Suspirium 

Our Ladies of Sorrow Master Post

 

Our Ladies of Sorrow is a 2009 Call of Cthulhu campaign written by Kevin Ross that I've owned for 12 years but have never even attempted to run, as is the sad tale of most of the RPG material I've accumulated over the years. I remember it getting a great deal of acclaim at the time, noted for standing out among most Call of Cthulhu material for using something quite divergent from the mythos as its main focus; the Ladies of Sorrow first written of by Regency England opium addict Thomas de Quincey and the inspiration of Dario Argento's Suspiria, the first part of his "Three Mothers" trilogy of horror films. It is a decidedly more occult flavor of campaigns. 

Despite the acclaim I recall it receiving, I don't think I've heard of or read anyone's account of having run or played in it. So I decided to change that. Choosing to run this as a Delta Green campaign, one with my own rather idiosyncratic interpretation of the setting, I plan to see if it lives up to the hype. I intend to write up each session as a play report and then offer a critique on each scenario within the book and the experience of running it. 

I also plan to throw in a few interlude scenarios unrelated to, and thus not included in, the Our Ladies of Sorrows book. I plan to give them the same treatment. 

So, with the preamble out of the way, let's start the show.

Book One, House of Shadows: 

• Clues and Player Resources
• Green Box
• Session 1
• Session 2
• Session 3
• Soundtrack 
• In Review

Interlude, The Highways of West Texas:

• Briefing 

Delta Green Campaign: Our Ladies of Sorrow [Part 1]

 Our Ladies of Sorrow

House of Shadows

It is October 14th, 2009 in San Antonio. An ad-hoc assemblage of Agents wait in a diner whose prices do not match either the service or décor. They are:

• Agent JETHRO: Colt Buchanan of the Texas Rangers  
• Agent HORATIO: Special Agent Terrance Delacruz of the FBI
• Agent WALLADA: Professor Isabella Fernandez 
• Agent QASIM: Naazim Dugal, DoD Social Worker
• Inspector Bravie Soto: Compliance Inspector of the National Indian Gaming Commission

They've been assembled here by a gin soaked louse of a federal agent they only know as LAMBERT. One of his many assets, an old man named Frank Ryder, is afraid of something and LAMBERT has put together this cell as a wellness check on a trusted asset who knows where the bodies are buried.

Our Ladies of Sorrow: Clues and Player Resources for House of Shadows

 

Contents of the Law Office of Darnell Guerra

Here are the (slightly edited) contents of the Law Office of Darnell Guerra, the Green Box Frank Ryder was custodian of for LAMBERT. The items listed have not been thoroughly inspected. 

Delta Green: The Diary of Augustus Castaigne 1855-1857

 Here's a little tome I cooked up when helping someone brainstorm for items to put in a green box during their run of Impossible Landscapes. I based a lot of this on previously held historical knowledge and information from Brett Kramer's free pdf Notes on the Turner Codex, as published by Sentinel Hill Press. I highly recommend you go check them out. 

You can access the Google Documents version here:

The Diary of Augustus Castaigne 1855-1857

A slim leather bound book with yellowing paper, the diary shows signs of water damage but is, for the most part, legible. Beginning on April 12, 1855, the journal identifies the author as one Augustus Castaigne of Natchez, Mississippi, a southern gentleman, member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, and self-described adventurer. The first few passages consist of Augustus detailing his early life as a scion of a slave holding plantation family, his passionate belief in the “Southern Cause” and “Southern Rights,” in Manifest Destiny, and his own destiny to be an integral part for the furtherance of all three. The description is immensely self aggrandizing, but what concrete facts that can be gleaned from it are that his family was in massive debt to creditors, his first and only marriage ended with the death of his wife Camilla of Yellow Fever in 1844, and that in 1855 he has traveled to San Francisco with his 12 year old daughter Cassandra to meet with the filibuster William Walker with the intention of joining his private military invasion of Nicaragua.  

The entries from May 3, 1855 to April of 1857 detail the travel of himself and roughly 60 other mercenaries to Nicaragua, the subsequent battles, the establishment of Walker’s Republic of Nicaragua, and finally the losing war with the Central American Alliance. Augusts spares no effort in vividly describing his role in the battles and the subsequent administration, much of which to anyone with a History or Military Science (Land) of 40% will find highly unlikely. However, the reader will also note an increasing sort of mania in Augustus’s writing, as well as his notably lurid descriptions of battlefield violence. 

The diary takes a notable turn after the fall of San Juan del Sur on April 17, 1857 to Central American troops. Castaigne elects to flee into the jungle with his daughter. The entries from this point onwards get increasingly fantastical, and a reader with Medicine of 60% or a Psychotherapy of 40% can conclude he is rapidly entering delirium, likely from malaria induced fever. He eventually describes finding an ancient temple complex, with several pages dedicated to his sketches of the temple as well as the strange glyphs he finds hammered onto “plates of a alloy forgotten to men of this darkling era.” Any skill rating of Archaeology, Anthropology, or History above base will note all of these are reminiscent of the ancient Maya, but an Archeaology of 40, Anthropology of 60, or a History of 70 will recognize substantial divergences from the norm of Mayan architecture and that the glyphs match no know form of Mayan writing. An Occult of 70 will instead recognize these glyphs to be similar to that of Muvian High-Naacal as described in the much derided Otto Dostmann’s Remnants of Lost Empires. Agents who have read Rites of the Ancient Maya Revealed (aka the Turner Codex) by Maplethorpe Turner will provide the same information about the glyphs, as well as confirming the temple to be consistent with his descriptions of the worship of Kaiwan,  “The Invisible One”, “The Unspeakable”, “Lord of the Great Sign”, and  “Whisperer of Truth”.

Augusts final entries are dominated by him decrying the folly of the Founding Fathers in abandoning monarchy, saying that the “Golden Empire of America is a throne upon which a king anointed by the Lord of the Great Sign must sit.” He then meticulously details his ambitious plan for conquering Nicaragua from his redoubt, and then from there the entire continent, upon which with his daughter he will “found the purest dynasty the earth has ever seen, one that shall produce history as others produce plays."

Agents reading this diary in full with a Military Science of 60% and sufficiently enough King in Yellow corruption as decided by the keeper will see the utter brilliance of Augustus’s strategy as well as be able to deduce how to get to his “temple redoubt”, all it would need to start are a handful of armed men and the right leader…

The PC (or more likely at this point, NPC) trying to enact this plan get a +20% to all military related rolls (artillery, navigate land, military science, etc.) while operating out of the temple redoubt. GMs can either choose to use this as a scenario hook (someone who read the diary operating as a KiY Colonel Kurtz in the jungles of Central America) or as a poignant conclusion to a King in Yellow focused campaign (like Impossible Landscapes).

The Diary of Augustus Castaigne 1855-1857

By Augusts Castaigne 

In English, study time: 2 weeks. Artillery +2%, Firearms +1%, Military Science (Land) +3%, Occult +4%, Survival 1%, Unnatural +3%, Muvian Hieretical Naacal +1%; SAN loss 1D4+1 

Delta Green NPC: Matthew Rockyhara

Here's a useful ally NPC for Delta Green. I wrote him up for this summer's NPC contest over at Night at the Opera. I started working on some expanded acquisition rules to make him more useful, but the deadline came before I could do that, but I still plan on doing that, so sit tight because I'll post it here when I do.
 You can get the Google Docs version here.

Matthew Rockyhara

The Agents find themselves outside a shamble down prefab building in the dreary badlands on the outskirts of the city. Behind the chain link fence topped with razor wire are cars of every make and model, the lights on the prefab illuminate red letters spelling “A#1 Towing Service” with “Your Satisfaction is Our #1 Priority” underneath, with “NO CHECKS ACCEPTED” written beneath that. This is where the case officer said to meet your contact for support.  A little old lady stands nearby the entrance, looking on the verge of tears. A wall of a man emerges from the prefab, looking like some kind of parody of a modern outlaw in his cowboy boots and raybans. The old woman starts babbling about how she needs that car to get her prescriptions. He tells her if she can’t cough up the $560 she can get bent. He walks past her towards the agents, beaming with a big smile when he spots them. He hands the agents the keys “Hey there! Our friend told me you guys would be here soon, said you needed a car. I got the perfect one, you don’t even need to worry about getting it back to me.” “What about the $560” one of the agents asks sheepishly “Oh, that? That’s all bullshit fees the city lets me charge. Only cost me $15 in gas to tow it over here for ya’ll, don’t worry about it!” He extends his hand in earnest friendship  “Matthew Rockyhara, by the way. At your service.”

Matthew Rockyhara is many things. A veteran. A small business owner. A scoundrel. A patriot. A minor crime lord. A friend. It was around the time our invasion of Panama was wrapping up in 1990 that Matthew Rockyhara had his brush with the unnatural. He flew Sikorsky Seahawks as an ensign for the navy, and it was in one of those helicopters that he proved himself a reliable and heroic man. Those agents would have died deaths indescribable in that jungle had he not braved that shimmering sky and juked the things filtering down from the sky.