Project Nemesis is a fan driven website for games that use the One-Roll Engine (like Nemesis, Wild Talents, Reign and Monsters) or Chaosium's Basic Roleplay System (BRP) (like Call of Cthulhu) and the Delta Green setting.
You remember when your little sister grew an extra head and you took the butt
end of your daddy's shotgun to her until she stopped wailingin alien
tongues? Remember when you thought
that fat headless zombie-thing wouldn't stop growing or mutating or whatever
and you kept peppering the gigantic maggots erupting from it's bloated belly
with buckshot?
Remember when you
suddenly lost control of your body and the buzzing in your brain was so loud
you almost didn't stop whatever was controlling you from blowing your own
damn fool head off with that Remington 870 you picked up off the headless
state trooper's body?
It all started in 1995. One Year
after the Fairfield Incident. Things were crazy, paranoid times full of cell
structures and biohazards. Ahundred damned things popping up needing to be
put down every week. Contaminated towns disappearing off the map, Mob
informants withering and shrivelling right inside FBI "interview" rooms like
fast forwarded Egyptian mummies. Occult graffitti showing up in bad
neighborhoods and good neighborhoods.
I saw the Yellow Sign scrawled
60 feet up the wall across the back alley of a meat packing plant. At least
three bodies worth of human meat in the dumpster. How'd they even get the
blood that high up?
Every night, a different story, a new scenario...
scattershot beads of distilled hellfire scorching new and acute trails of
twisted agony through the raw remnants of human sanity. They come at you all
at once. Not like the well-aimed surgical precision of a sniper, but
like a maniac's spree killing, slaughtering human victims like
diseased
cattle.
Remember that evening on the pier? Two ships coming
in loaded with inhuman monsters? Cargo containers shaking like unstable
bombs... the full moon glaring down with cold light in the frozen night?
Steel rending with a metallic scream?
Not every member of Delta Green is comfortable acting outside the law,
waging an illegal war without end. There is a cell of agents
(henceforth referred to as `M-Cell`) who intend to gain sanction by
Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acting outside the designs of
A-Cell. They hope, with enough evidence, to present an unassailable
case to Congress to officially reinstate Delta Green. This conspiracy
within Delta Green has slowly compiled considerable documentation with
which to present their case.
Delta Green faces a host of enemies, human and otherwise. Some of those
that cross the organization might have good intentions, but, as they
say about the road to Hell…
To continue the trend of scenarios about silencing former DG agents and
friendlies, I present my homage/ripoff of the movie Burn After Reading.
I've taken the basic setup of the movie and then veered off into DG
terrtiory so the players can participate. I've also left out George
Clooney's character because he isn't necessary to get the ball rolling.
This scenario is set in Washington DC.
Annabelle Gillick, a one-time Delta Green `friendly', is becoming a
danger to the people around her. Gillick, a psychic, was assisting a
Delta Green agent just over two years ago when her sensitive mind was
exposed to alien emanations projected by an otherworldly entity. This
drove her mad and until recently she has been in a catatonic state,
waging and slowly losing an internal war with the nightmare impulses
that have infected her. Her control is slipping, and her damaged mind
is projecting echoes of the creature's terrible consciousness to those
around her – to caustic effect. Enter the player-characters; A-Cell
just learned about Gillick, and are concerned she is a security threat.
Everyone makes mistakes, even A-Cell. However, when A-Cell makes
mistakes, there's a lot on the line. James Fitzhugh is a decorated FBI
agent, and a member of H-Cell, codename Horatio. A-Cell is convinced
that Horatio has become a liability and is need of a retirement plan.
Exactly why Delta-Green is after one of its own is up to the Keeper,
but the underpinning facts should be wrong. The agents are tasked with
delivering his severance check.
This Delta Green Night at the Opera is meant to introduce a
potential DG friendly, Dr. Manheim Cornwall, a clinical psychiatrist MD
who is one of the United States' foremost experts on cults, human
persuasion & influence, and the neurological basis of faith. He has
had a long career of corporate consulting and university funded
research, and isregularly published in the American Journal of
Psychiatry, and other respected academic publications. Unfortunately
for him, he tends toengage in headline-grabbing experiments. It is his
latest research project that leads him into some Delta Green related
territory, and gives A-Cell and the PCs leverage over him that could be
usefully exploited in future Operas, should they survive.
This scenario is different from most in that it is designed for a
single player character to explain the origin of the PC's "unique"
abilities and induction into Delta Green.
Pick an Agent PC; the one with the lowest SAN, or the one with the most
recent bout of temporary insanity, or the one who has done the most
morally questionable things, or just the one who deserves it most. As a
Night at the Opera is wrapping up, remind them of the existence of
their day job (FBI, CIA, whatever) and that they have received a memo
reminding them that their biennial Psychological Evaluation will take
place on the next Monday (or at some more distant future point if you
want it to hang over them).