Operation Lost Herald: Chapter Four

Numb, scared but not quite alone in the Delta Green RPG, using Mythic 2e

Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this document are ©SolumProtocol, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Thumbnail Photo by Simon Petereit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-smoking-fire-in-the-rainforest-15550867/

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The Plateau of Leng - After Nightfall

I ran, keeping a level footing as I broke through the brush, and a few moments later, I caught sight of Palmer, running at a dead sprint, which wasn’t particularly fast, but it was loud as she crashed through the trees and shallow stream.¹ She looked fresh, which gave me a moment’s pause. She had disappeared a few days ago and she was dressed in jeans, a shirt and a smart jacket, with faux leather heeled boots, not that different from what I had seen her in before, but it all looked relatively clean, as though it has been plucked straight from the wardrobe. There was a splash of dirt here and there, and a small tear on the hem of her jacket, but other than that? She looked in better condition than me. I didn’t have long to dwell on that though, as I quickly realized why she had been running.² A hunched figure burst from the trees, running on all fours like some kind of goddamned animal, but it was a humanoid. At least, I think it was. A man with tangled, jet black hair and a face twisted in a snarl scrambled along the ground in leaps and bounds.³ He smelt terrible. He smelt completely inhuman, like a combination of unwashed, blood drenched monster mixed with grave dirt. I felt my lips pull back into a smile, and a small sense of relief. This was something I could handle.⁴ I stood firm and aimed down the sight, waiting for a clear shot. It came a second later, as the figure stood to it’s full height and threw out its hands. Vines shot out from below Palmer’s feet⁵ and I heard her swear from down the path, but this was the best shot I was going to have.⁶ I fired a three round burst that hit the creature in the small of the back. The bullets knocked him forward, but the flesh around the entry wound bubbled and frothed with blood and liquid flesh.

“Kat?” Palmer’s voice called, but she sounded half a world away as I advanced.⁷ The man turned to me, his black eyes flashing as his teeth became longer, forming into ivory tusks that curled out of his mouth. His body hunched over more, his spine extended with creaks and snaps as a thick thatch of fur sprouted from his skin as he screamed, his eyes turning into yellow slits, like a goat’s.⁸ He spat something over my shoulder, missing me by inches and the smell became so strong I could almost taste it. I ducked away and fired another short burs,⁹ catching him in the chest, throat and face. I stalked forward as it’s scream of rage became a pathetic mew of pain and it fell to one knee. I kicked it sharply in the chest and it toppled over, its fur sloughing off it onto my boot as it slumped to the ground.¹⁰ To my mild horror and slight relief, its skin continued to seep off and into the grass, like an ooze, leaving behind a mutated and inhuman network of bone that bore little resemblance to a human skeleton, at least not any I had seen.¹¹ I took a deep breath.¹² The adrenaline felt like it was coursing through someone else's body, and I still felt sluggish, so I didn’t yet have in me to confront the feeling of ravenous hunger that had dug its claws into me the moment the monster dropped. Besides, I had something else to worry about. I raised my gaze to meet the frantic hazel eyes of Dr. Helena Palmer, who stood looking at me, stunned.

“Kat?” She asked again.¹³ Then she collapsed.¹⁴

---

A campfire - Sometime after Nightfall

I suppose I should be grateful that the body of this terrifying creature had melted into nothingness, because with Palmer unconscious, I don’t know I would have been able to stop myself from sinking my teeth into it. I shuddered, and even through the dull numbness of my body, I felt a chill run down my spine. The thought felt alien, like it was coming from this place, not from inside my mind, but I couldn’t help remembering what the creature in the basement had said. '

‘I suggest you try eating your prey while you are in Leng, although once you start, you may find it a challenge to stop’

Best not to think about that, as impossible as that seemed right now. I checked my ammo.¹⁵ I had a spare magazine for the SMG, and two for my side arm. That would be fine, if this stay was temporary, but my impression of Palmer in the moment before she passed out was that a plan was not at the forefront of her mind when she got into this mess. I pulled the knife from my belt, a standard issue combat blade,¹⁶ and bustled around before remembering that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I wanted to make a campfire, but apart from a few summers in a motorhome as a teen before dad went missing, I had no actual camping experience. I piled up some wood that was relatively dry and tried to spark a flame, but I didn’t have any luck. I sat there pondering my next move, looking over Palmer as I slowly but surely felt my body begin the harsh, post-episode come down. The Professor was dressed in something approaching business casual.¹⁷ She had a medium pistol on her hip, and a knife similar to mine, as well as a small backpack that I didn’t bother to rummage through. I could tell that it had at least one thick, leather bound book inside, which would have made me roll my eyes in other circumstances. I wondered if her boney prisoner friend had pushed her in as well? Not physically, or with his mind, as the circle would have prevented it, but maybe he tricked her? She certainly didn’t seem kitted out for jungle exploration.¹⁸ I felt a warm, unfamiliar feeling in my chest watching her sleep. I thought she had died. Then, I thought she had gone crazy, and got herself involved in something fucked up and then died anway. Jury was still out on whether she was crazy, I supposed, but she looked like herself.¹⁹ She smelt like herself too, although with thoughts like that, I was hardly the best judge on someone’s grip on reality. I heard a snap, and nearly jumped out my skin as the pile of twigs in front of me erupted in a tiny gout of flame. My hand dropped to my pistol, and I scanned the tree line. Nothing. I crouched back down to examine the flames and I felt my blood run cold. Sitting opposite me, black eyes regarding me with cool disinterest²⁰ was a man in a sharply tailored and no doubt painfully expensive suit. He held an athame lightly in his hand, its blade almost as thin as my pinky finger with a curling, unpleasant cross guard that made my eyes hurt to look at. It was pointed beneath Palmer’s chin, and I held up a both my hands, to avoid the temptation to escalate further.

“Greetings, huntress.” He said in clipped, lightly accented English. “It is a dark day for my people if you are here.”

---

I remained crouched with my hands up, but I let my eyes go cold.

“Remove the knife from my friends throat, and let’s talk, like reasonable people.” I said, effecting a calm I did not feel. The man smiled, a flash of brilliant white teeth that did little to put me at ease.²¹ He removed the knife, but still held it in his hands, reverently running a finger along the edge. He was either being very gentle, or it’s edges were dull.²² He smelt off. Not as repugnant as any of the monsters I had faced today, but not right either. The unnatural scents of the jungle, the humid, cloying closeness that I hadn’t noticed until I started to feel my body again was seemingly more intense around this person.

“Reasonable people?” He asked after a moment, cocking his head in amusement. “I do not think anyone would describe us as people, yes?” I narrowed my eyes.

“I’m getting a little sick of monster like you acting like we’re all in one big club.’ I spat.

“If you could see yourself right now, chere, you would not be so disbelieving.” His smile was bland, smug and overwhelmingly irritating, but I schooled my features and rolled myself back onto my heels.

“Let's get to the point.” I said gruffly. He nodded. “You’re speaking to me. I assume you want something. I want to go home. I want to take my friend with me.” I shifted my shoulders awkwardly. “I’m getting the sense that you don’t want me here. Let’s make a deal.” He observed me for a few moments longer, and he smiled again.

“I’ve met one of your kind before, you know?” He said.²³ He pulled the collar of his shirt open, revealing a nasty scar, not dissimilar to the one on my arm where jagged, broken teeth or something similar had torn the flesh away. “When you look at my neck like that, chere, it brings back uncomfortable memories.” He said in a whisper.

“I am my own person.” I said with a little more heat than I had intended. Mostly because he was right. I could see the pulse of his blood along his neck, the veins and arteries dancing beneath his skin. A slice or a tear, and the blood would gush. I shook the thoughts away. Something about this place made me feel….more. And less. The bloodlust felt new and alien and I didn’t want any part of it. “What happened?” I asked, more because I could tell he wanted to tell me because of any actual interest.²⁴

“I was visiting family in Vietnam. Very few of my people that walk among the humans reside in or around the Plateau anymore. When I got there, someone like you-” He pointed his knife at me. “Had my little sister in his jaws. She wasn’t a child, she was strong, both physically and mentally and she was well learned in the rituals of our people. A lone, unhinged, unarmed mortal should not have been a threat. And yet, she was dead. He sank his jagged, broken teeth into my throat, but I got this knife into his heart before the end.” He looked at the knife fondly. “It’s strictly ceremonial.” He added. “Fortune favored me.” He pointed the knife at me. “What do you offer?” He said.

“You obviously have something in mind, otherwise you wouldn’t have approached like this?” I said.

“I do.” He said, that knife smile flashing again. “But you have to offer. There is an order to these things, after all. Negotiations.” He said the word as though he was savoring the expression, and I wracked my mind for something of use, something this creature would want from me. When the answer came, it was an obvious one, if unpleasant. I was seemingly only good for one thing, at least in his eyes.

“A life?” I asked. “There is someone, or something, that you want dealt with?”

“Are you asking me, or telling me?” He said lightly.

“Telling.” I said firmly “It’s the only reason I can think that we are negotiating in the first place. I’m a hunter, after all. I assume you have a quarry that you can’t, or won’t, deal with. I can take care of it, if you get me and my friend here back home.” He looked at me expectantly, and I continued. “Tell me the details. We can Negotiate. Obviously, I have lines I won’t cross.” I told him sternly.

“For now.” he said, with an air of confidence that made me shudder. “Don’t worry. This will be right up your alley, as the humans say.”

---

The man’s name was Bao. He led me through the jungle, up a winding, confusing path until we reached a small, almost homely structure that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the woods back in Seattle.

“Imported wood.” He said with a smile, opening the door. He carried Palmer over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and I winced as her head bobbed around, her body limp and unresisting.²⁵ She had woken up, briefly, as we prepared to leave, but she had passed out again after beginning to panic. I was fairly sure Bao was keeping her asleep through unnatural means. He filled me in on his request as we walked. Sure, this wasn’t my usual mission structure, but there was a monster and an unnatural threat that needed to die, so what was the harm? It wasn’t like I had any choice, and my ears pricked up at the mention of a familiar adversary.

“And you are sure that this ‘Leroy Wilbur’ is a member of the Order of Midnight?” I asked Boa skeptically.

“Is that a surprise?” He asked

“It just seems like a large coincidence. I’ve run into a few of them over the last year or so.” Boa looked at me, his eyes unreadable before shaking his head.

“Truly, you do not understand the nature of your existence.’ He mused. He didn’t elaborate. My curiosity, a facet of my mind I thought was well tamed at this point, got the better of me as I asked.

“Care to enlighten me?”²⁶

“Best not too, I think.” He said with a shrug. “You will understand when you are ready. There is a way these things are done, after all.” He turned away and returned to the mission, and I dropped it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he meant by that anyway.

---

The mission was complicated. Leroy Wilbur, an ‘Adept’ in the Order of Midnight, had performed a ritual, killing 15 of Bao’s people, something called a Tcho-Tcho, in a blood sacrifice.²⁷

“I can see why you want him dead.” I said. He gave me a sharp look, and then he snorted a laugh. It rang a little false in the quiet gloom of the jungle.

“If they were weak enough to be captured by a conjurer of Wilbur’s caliber, then they were an embarrassment.” He said sternly. His back was stiff and I wondered just how true that was. Boa was trying to put on a face of disinterest, but his shoulders and the angles of his face were tight with suppressed tension. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, there was a personal factor here. Boa continued his debrief, explaining that the ritual had been an attempt to control time, or space or possible both. He didn’t know what Wilbur’s end goal had been, and he didn’t much care, because like many rituals passed down through oral tradition and the scribblings of mad men, it was wrong.

“The ritual is not designed to control anything.” He said, his teeth flashing in a humorless smile. “It is a summing ritual. It summons a creature that warps reality. It is a first step, you understand? Practitioners would summon the Non-Euclidean Serpent²⁸ and bargain with it. If the Serpent’s interest was captured, it’s presence warps reality.”

“But Leroy didn’t have anything to bargain with?”

“Correct. It is in the process of subsuming his form, and eroding his mind. This is not good. If the Serpent destroys his mind, and takes over his mortal shell, the results could be apocalyptic. At the very least, the East Coast of the United States wouldn’t survive.”

“If the stakes are so high, why are you sending me?” I asked, bemused.²⁹

“It is something of a partisan issue. My people are not a united front. I happen to like the world the way it is. This is not a widely held view.”

“So you’re acting alone?”

“Something like that.” he said, bowing his head. He shifted, a slight shrug of the shoulders. “Non-Euclidean Serpent’s are nasty creatures.” He added. “Your firearm will be of little use.” He prodded me hard in the chest, and I stumbled backwards, annoyed. “Devour its heart. It is the only way to be sure of its death.” I felt my skin flush and snarled.

“I’m not an animal.” I hissed. He tilted his head, a quizzical look on his face, before a glimmer of understanding entered his eyes.

“You’ve taken offense.” He said mildly. “You misunderstand. Your hunger, your drive to hunt? It isn’t an instinct, or a weakness. It is a weapon.” His black fathomless eyes met mine.

“If you had devoured my deranged kinsman back there, before his physical form was subsumed by the Plateau, you would have ended his cycle. Do you understand the power in that? The Hunt can bring an end to the endless. Once the Serpent has started to take the Adept’s form, their heart and soul will be bound. Claim your prize, and you will kill the Serpent. Do you understand?” I swallowed my mouth suddenly dry. Because God helped me, I think I did.

---

Oh Katherine, what are you getting yourself into? I didn’t note down all the prompts I used for this, but the Bao storyline was generated mostly from that initial interrupt scene. When I first got stuck in Leng and found Palmer still alive, I was thinking that she, maybe, had a way out. It’s cool to see how wildly different the dice can make it, especially when your Chaos Factor gets all the way up to 8! Thanks for reading, leave a comment or drop me a message to let me know how you think this storyline is going!

1. Oracle: Does she look fresh? 50/50 83 - Yes. Chaos Factor 8 is a little crazy.

2. Oracle: Inhuman pursuer? 50/50 10 Yes. Tcho-Tcho 84 Yes. Tcho-Tcho’s are often tied into the Plateau of Leng. There portrayal in a lot of mythos works is……problematic sometimes.

3. Oracle: Smell? Likely - 88 Yes. Random Event. Current Context Smells: Foul, Malodorous

4. Oracle: Does he have lower Dex than me? Extreme Yes. 01 Random Event. (I didn’t note what the event was. If memory serves, I rolled on the Combat Action table in Mythic, and got something to do with magic.)

5. NPC Skill: Palmer Dodge - 07/30

6. Skill: Firearms - 14/56 (-20% due to acute episode) DMG 10. Oracle: Does that rock it? Unlikely - 62 Yes.

7. Oracle: Is the enemy bleeding? 50/50 56 Yes Transform? 50/50 53 Yes. Mutant Odorous

8. Sanity(Unnatural): 02/43 - 0 Loss.

9. Skill: Firearms 21/56 (-20% due to acute episode) DMG 13 Oracle: Bleeding? 50/50 30 Yes. Enough to kill? Very Unlikely - 20 Yes.

10. Oracle: Does it turn to Ooze? 50/50 - 38 Yes

11. Sanity(Unnatural): 11/43 Critical, nice! Do I regain San for killing monster? Unlikely 21 Yes. 1 San regained.

12. Oracle: Is my episode over? 50/50 - 93 No

13. Oracle: Does she collapse? 50/50 36 Yes.

14. End Scene. Chaos Factor 7 Test Scene - 2 Interrupt - Befriend Wound.

15. Luck Roll No Modifiers - 20. Success

16. Skill: Survival - 24/10 I don’t really know what I expected. This would actually have been at -10 anyway, because of my episode.

17. Oracle: Is she armed? 5050 32 - Yes

18. Oracle: Do I regain Sanity for her being alive? 50/50 98 No. Bond? 50/50 01 Random Event.

19. Oracle: Smelt like herself? Likely - 67 Yes

20. Odds Evens Male/Female = Male. UNE: NPC Attitude - Neutral/Sociable. Unreasonable Duelist.

21. Does he remove the knife? 50/50 63 Yes. UNE Motivation: Discover the oppressed

22. Oracle: Does he smell? 50/50 30 Yes. “Humid Delightful” I hope I never meet anyone who smells Humidly delightful.

23. Oracle: Does he have a Scar? 50/50 16 Yes.

24. Oracle: What I expect? Likely 88 No. Somewhere in America? Likely 87 No Asia? 23 - Yes (I can’t actually remember what I thought his backstory was haha.)

25. Oracle: Does she wake up? 03 Extreme yes.

26. Skill: Persuade(-40% Due to personality) 84/50

27. Skill: Occult 95/30 (Check to see if Kay knows what a Tcho-Tcho is. She doesn’t - I’ll cover them in the Post Script)

28. I came up with this name on the fly, and then couldn’t think of a better one. I’m 50/50 on it, so I’m taking name suggestions.

29. Oracle: Is there some complicated Tcho-Tcho matter happening? 50/50 52 Yes.