Trapped in 'Puppet Shows & Shadow Plays'

Adam Scott Glancy's "Puppet Shows & Shadow Plays" is the next standalone scenario for Delta Green. I expect to publish it in PDF and full-color paperback in late September or early October. It accompanies Delta Green: The Conspiracy and will eventually appear in the scenario collection Delta Green: Incursions. Illustrations are by Dennis Detwiller, © the Delta Green Partnership.

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Last month, people began disappearing in the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in eastern Arizona. The first people missed were an elderly couple, the Curtleys. They were due at their son’s home for dinner. The Curtleys’ car was found on U.S. Route 70 with a flat tire, but there was no sign of the Curtleys.

Two days later, gas station attendant Felix Royos disappeared while working the night shift on U.S. Route 70, nearby.

Four days after that, Ed Stoltz and Chris Martin were reported missing while fishing on San Carlos Lake, about six km south of U.S. Route 70. Their camp was found abandoned, with no signs of violence or emergency.

As the Arizona highway patrol and Apache tribal police began to investigate, they noticed more disappearances connected to that area. The abandoned rental cars of two European couples—Rolf Trautner and Freda Ollenburg and Dieter and Vera Van Olson—were found two weeks ago. Both cars were on the side of U.S. Route 70, and neither showed signs of sabotage or mechanical failure.

An Apache sheep rancher, Victorio Begay, and his wife and two teenage sons vanished from their beds, leaving their flock unattended for at least a week. The Begay ranch is within 25 km of U.S. Route 70.

The national press has already picked up the story, dubbing the stretch of road “The Devil’s Highway.”

Scott wrote "Puppet Shows & Shadow Plays" for Delta Green in 1996 as an introductory scenario. The players can take the roles of established Agents of the Nineties conspiracy or they can create a couple of ordinary FBI agents and their colleagues facing their first exposure to the unnatural. Either way, the Agents investigate a string of reservation disappearances and find an even longer trail of terrors. 

A successful Medicine roll finds strange pre-death necrosis events in the human cadavers. Both amygdalae of each human cadaver appear to have suffered cell death before the victims were exsanguinated. Similarly, both adrenaline glands atop the kidneys have suffered similar pre-cardiac arrest necrosis. The enteric nervous systems in the intestinal tracts were also necrotic prior to death. Finally, the victim’s systems are awash with adrenochrome, a waste product created when the hormone adrenaline is used by the body.

Updating "Puppet Shows" for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game gave us an opportunity to tighten up the text, focus on some hints of horror that the original glossed over, and organize a great deal of background information in ways that the Agents might uncover. The deeper their ill-advised investigation, the more they find and may wish they had not. 

If the Agent has Unnatural at 10% or greater, or succeeds at a roll at +40%, they sense something else in the vision. For an instant they make eye contact with the coyote as it barks and yips like laughter and they lose another 1/1D6 SAN. Looking into the coyote’s eyes feels like being blinded and scorched by unseen light—like the vertigo of falling helplessly from an unfathomable height—like being pulled and stretched across the event horizon of a voracious black hole—like some hideous, all-encompassing revelation forgotten only in the mercy of awakening or death.

Pre-order "Puppet Shows & Shadow Plays" now at BackerKit in PDF or paperback.

Questions? Ask here.