Operation Winter Strain: Chapter Six

Hitting the books 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 wendel moretti: https://www.pexels.com/photo/assorted-book-in-library-1850021/

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Sagebrush Town Library - 11 AM

Jasper dropped me off at the library a short while after we were kicked out of Debbie’s apartment, but he remained in the car, glancing irritably at his burner phone.

“Nate called. Something has come up. Call me if you find anything, alright?” He said through the window. I narrowed my eyes at him, Debbie’s folder tucked underneath my arm.¹ He smiled at me and then had the audacity to give me a wink. “I’ll tell you about it later, just hit the books!” He called, revving the engine and leaving me in the library carpark.

I found a small booth near the back of the library and began to leaf through the folder. A few print out photos of a church, taken at a distance on a personal digital camera were front and center. The Church of the Four days dead was dedicated to Saint Lazarus of Bethlehem, a man who died and lived again. I didn’t like where this was going already. Debbie had two pages of typed out notes on the history of the building, which had been established back in the 60s and had lead an unremarkable existence as a secluded, almost monastic church that rarely interacted with the nearby townships.² That changed recently when a man on the local town council, James Scott, began an outreach program. In exchange for a small amount of funding, The Church assisted the town with the local homeless population, which had been getting worse in recent years. Debbie doesn’t speculate on that, focusing mostly on the Church itself. I jotted down James Scott’s name³ and filed through the rest of the notes, finding little else of interest apart from a small local interest piece on the church by a newspaper out of Phoenix.⁴ The article was accompanied by a photo of the church and a small, slightly wild looking man with a thick tangle of a beard and a shaved head. He stared out of the photo with a wild intensity that sent a cold tingle of unease down my spine. I checked the article for a name, finding it in a footnote. Walter Sims. I jotted his name down under Scott’s then flipped back to the photos.⁵ Debbie’s photos had clearly been taken at a distance with the zoom set to max, but I circled a few areas of interest.⁶ The large, twin oak doors at the front seemed to be the the main point of entry, but the left side of the church was mostly window from floor to ceiling, and I could just make out a small side door close to the end, although it could just be the pixilation. The back and right would be inaccessible as they were nestled right up against the craggy rock of the dune. I closed the folder and stood, stretching my back with a crack.⁷ My phone buzzed on the table, the vibration painfully loud in the silence of the library, and I hurried out the door to answer it, followed by a few stern looks.

“Hey Jones, good news.” Landry said, his voice strained. “We have a lead on the blood analyzer, and a bit of medical help.”⁸

“That’s good news, right?” I said.⁹ There was a long pause before he answered.

“It’s well below board.” Landry said softly. “We’ve called in all the favors we can, so this one is a favor owed, and they are not good people.” My mind returned to the criminal encampment outside of town, and my mouth twisted.

“What’s the cost?” I asked

“Nothing yet.” He said. “We’ll see. Jasper is going to meet the contact. I’ll reach out if we find anything else.”

“Sounds good.” I said glumly. If it saved the CDC agent and gave us the edge against this illness, it would probably be worth it, but still. Criminals? It made me skin itch. I went back to work, sliding into a library computer to search for a few persons of interest when my phone buzzed again. The person opposite peered at me, but I smiled apologetically and checked the screen. A short text from Jasper that simply read ‘Fuck Nolan. Fuck Nate. Fuck this.’ I quirked an eyebrow, and shot him a text back. He sent a simple but weighty message in response;

JW: This won't end well.¹⁰

I sighed. I couldn’t help but agree.

---

I had two names that I needed to chase up, James Scott the town councilor and Walter Sims the scruffy looking pastor. I started with Mr. Scott.¹¹ I navigated to the town council’s webpage, which was rudimentary but had a staff page with a few photos of all the councilors over small bios of each one. James Scott was at the bottom of the page and I felt my hand tighten on the mouse. It was the same guy that had boxed me in back at the CDC forward base, the man in the suit and tie who stank like mold.¹² I glanced through the short biography, which included a short professional history and an office address. It looks like he had been on the political track in Arizona for a while, working as a volunteer throughout the state after graduating from Arizona State university with a major in political science.¹³ He looked equally bedraggled and scruffy in his town council photo with large bags under his eyes and his skin a pallid white like he hadn’t been exposed to the sun for a few months. An hour or so of searching online and on the ASU webpage, and I turned up a few older photos of Mr. Scott. He looked different, I hesitate to say normal, but he looked healthy with an even summer tan and expensive designer glasses. I suspect something happened between graduation and his running for town councilor as I had found nothing to find ties between him and the Church before his councilmanship. There was littlie else to find online so I looked up the number of his previous volunteer gig, a campaign assistant out in Tucson, as well as the number for the university.¹⁴ I stood outside and called the campaign office in Tucson, tapping my foot idly as the phone rang. It was after 12, but someone picked up before the answering machine kicked in. I fed them a story about working for the local paper, and trying to get some background on the newest town counselor, letting the lies flow from my lips with only half a mind on them. The woman on the other end of the line was keen to chat, too keen perhaps, as she talked my ear off for a good 15 minutes before approaching something relevant.

“He went off a big camp trip over the long weekend.” She whispered conspiratorially. “We could never tell if he had a bad time, or a really, really good one, ya know? He came back and he was spacey. He had been as quick as a whip before, and then everyone was always chasing him up for work.” While the woman talked, I noticed something odd across the parking lot. A small sedan was parked on the opposite side of the lot, 4 people inside with their windows rolled up. I pulled a notebook out of my pocket and began taking notes as the woman on the phone laboriously approached a point and narrowed my eyes at the car.¹⁵ 2 men and 2 women, all with ragged, scruffy hair and tattered clothes. One of them rolled down a window, and I took a long breath through my nose. There it was. Must and mold, the distinctive scent I was starting to hate. The man in the driver's seat saw me looking and gunned the engine.¹⁶ He drove parallel to me, and moved much faster than he should in a parking lot, but it didn’t matter. I jotted down the license plate. They were watching us, it seems. I would have to warn Jasper.

“-I thought he had smoked a bit too much of the devils lettuce if you know what I mean, you know college kids these days.” the woman continued, oblivious to my inattention.

“You wouldn’t happen to remember where he went camping, do you?”¹⁷

“Ya know, I do? He gave everyone a pamphlet when he got back, he was super excited about it, but in a weird, monotone way. Let me see if I can find it.” the sound of energetic bustling filed the phone line for a spell before the woman’s voice returned. “There it is. Wilderness Retreat Campgrounds, out near the Estrella Mountains. You said he’s out in Sagebrush now? It’s not too far from there, maybe he liked it so much he went back? I hope his work ethic improved!”

---

I returned to the computer in the library to see what I could turn up about the campgrounds.¹⁸ It was a handful of miles away from The Church, a five minute drive or under hour hike. That part of the mountain had a lot of trails, maybe James Scott wandered off of one and found himself at the church? Did it matter? I had already confirmed the man was connected, did I need to know why? I turned my attention instead to Walter Sims, the Pastor.¹⁹ What I found was sparse, and I was unlikely to find more using the Library terminal and a search engine, but I did find one thing of interest; a book, seemingly self published in the mid 90s by one ‘W. Sims’²⁰ Funghi of Ancient America. It had an ISB number, and the library had a single copy in their “Local Authors!” section. I went and retrieved it from the shelf. It was a slim book with a hand drawn illustrations of a variety of different mushrooms and small fauna. I flipped open the front page, and glanced at the “About the Author” section, which included a small, black and white photo of a familiar middle aged man.²¹ The telltale intense stare and grim features were recognizable as Pastor Walter Sims, although his beard was shorter and not quite as wild, and he had a thinning mop of hair on his head. He wasn’t smiling. The book was small, but I didn’t want to spend my time here flicking through a probably irrelevant book about mushrooms, and besides, Joe was the mushroom expert. I was trying to think of the best way to take the book without a library card when that familiar smell returned.²² My head whipped towards the door and I instinctively fell into a crouch. Two men stood in the doorway, their features slightly sunken and heads shaved. They wore plain blue jumpsuits with name tags and small, abstract red birds on their breast pockets. Looking behind them, I could see a battered old van parked in the entryway, a roughly scrawled “Phoenix Removals” pasted on the side panel. The red bird on the jumpsuits and van could be described as a Phoenix, if the person was feeling charitable, but looked more like a hastily drawn stick figure bird painted with vibrant red and orange paint. The two men turn and face the librarian, asking a question I couldn’t make out and pointing around the room. Their stench flared in my nostrils as the moved into the library, but there were too many people here to make a scene. I glanced around for an exit²³ and found a large window near the rear of the building.²⁴ I slipped the book into my bag and stalked towards it, but heard a yell behind me. I swore, and broke into a run,²⁵ twisting the handle and throwing the window open. Their yells got closer as I hauled myself through, and I threw out a boot²⁶ to try and slam the window shut behind me but their arms blocked the way, so I rolled to my feet and broke into another sprint.²⁷ I made for the nearby alleyway as they dragged themselves through the window and took after me.²⁸ I ducked left, then right before sliding on my heels with a curse. A dead end, littered with garbage. I turned on my heel, but the two crashed around the corner with a wild look in their eyes. I thought about drawing my gun, but they were moving fast, and I’d rather keep my hands free. I needn’t have worried, as it turns out. The moment the first jumpsuit got close enough for me to take a swing he stopped dead as an arm as thick as my torso shot out of the wall next to me. Only it wasn’t a wall anymore. Where a moment before I could have sworn there was a wall of solid brick, now a small, perfectly round window had appeared and a massive figure lumbered out, one of the thugs gripped in a large, inhuman fist.²⁹ The man kicked and flailed, but I saw a muscle in the fist around his neck twitch, and his body went limp as his neck cracked. The thug behind him slid to a stop and was trying to turn to run, but the figure advanced, Tan Trench coat flapping around its almost comically large frame as it swooped down on the fleeing man, taking him up in it’s free hand and crushing the man’s neck with embarrassing ease. The creature in the trench coat turned towards me, and this time I did draw my gun, bracing it against my arm and aiming for what I hoped was the creature’s head. It dropped the two bodies and held clawed, inhuman hands up in a pose of apparent surrender, then slowly moved the hands to the hat on its head. The smell of mold and must had dissipated to background noise with the thugs' deaths only to be replaced by the smell of death and grave dirt radiating in waves from the figure in front of me. They gripped their wide brimmed hat in an almost delicate pinch between thumb and forefinger and then swept it form their head. A ghastly, horrifying visage looked back at me for a split second, raw bloody skin and muscle and sinew spread over a jackal’s skull with milky white, ghostly eyes. But only for a second.³⁰ I could almost convince myself I hadn't seen it. Almost. I stared boggle eyed at the stranger that stood before me, their hat held sheepishly in their hands in front of them. A woman an inch or so taller than me, with shoulder length bright blonde hair and startling blue eyes stood in an ill fitting tan trench coat, twirling a wide brimmed hat in her hands. She smiled weakly, revealing a row of perfect, straight white teeth before saying awkwardly,

“We should talk.”³¹

---

Who is this mysterious monstrous woman? If anyone has brushed up on Delta Green lore, they might know already, but otherwise, we will find out next time. Kat was unable to push the research onto someone else this mission, and it went sideways, as can be expected. Some fun turns here though! Thank you for reading!

1. Oracle: Is Jasper hiding something? Likely - 84 No.

2. Oracle: Any traceable funding? 50/50 63 - Yes. Someone in Sagebrush? 50/50 - 7 Extreme yes.

3. Oracle: Is there anything else? Unlikely - 48 Yes. Police reports? 50/50 69 No. News Article? 50/50 11 Yes. Random Event - will roll it later

4. Oracle: Is there a picture? 50/50 29 Yes. Anyone I recognize? Likely - 99 Extreme no.

5. Oracle: Was Debbie close enough to get anything useful? Unlikely - 50 Yes.

6. Oracle: Are the Entrances as I expect (one in the front, one in the back and maybe a side door)? Likely - 98 Extreme no.

7. Random event - Remote Event - “Recruit Path.”

8. Oracle: Jasper going to get it? Likely - 6 Extreme yes

9. Oracle: What is the issue? Jasper gone all day? 50/50 66 - Random event - No. Cost? 50/50 12 Yes. (NPC (Jasper) Negative - “Inquire Cooperation.”)

10. I wrote out a text conversation iPhone style before remembering texting in 2006 was a nightmare. This line is the only one actually relevant

11. Oracle: Is he the man in the suit? Likely - 35 Yes.

12. Oracle: Anything useful in his bio? Unlikely - 39 Yes.

13. Oracle: Does he look disheveled the photo? 50/50 26 Yes. Can I find a class photo? Unlikely - 28 Yes. Scruffy? Very Unlikely - 42 No. I remember the internet having a lot of stuff in 2006/2007, but I’m not sure if it would have this kind of thing, so I leave it up to the oracle moving forward.

14. Skill: CHA X 5 - 36/65 Do the Tucson people remember when he went strange? Likely - 01 Extreme yes (Random Event - NPC Action (‘He' - ‘Inform Extravagance’)

15. Oracle: Scruffy looking guys? 50/50 63 - Yes

16. Skill: Alertness - 65/80 - Catch the license plate? Very Likely 74 - Yes.

17. Oracle: Does she remember? Likely - 66 Yes. (Random Event - Move Towards thread - (Investigate Phoenix removals) ‘Open adversity’)

18. Oracle: Near/next to the church? Likely 68 - Yes.

19. Oracle: Anything apart from the article? Unlikely - 25 Yes. Published a book maybe? Very Unlikely - 04 Extreme yes.

20. Oracle: Does it have a Weird occult mushroomy name? Likely - 68 Yes. Library have a copy? Likely - 18 Yes.

21. Oracle: Scruffy? 50/50 52 - yes.

22. Skill Check: Alertness - 70/80 (This is the random event from footnote 14)

23. Oracle: Back door? 50/50 07 Extreme yes.

24. Skill: Stealth 26/22 Reminder; give next solo character stealth

25. Skill: Athletics - 41/59

26. DEX X 5 - (Close the Window) 74/70 Oracle: Are there Alleyways nearby? 50/50 - 41 Yes

27. Opposed Roll: Athletics - 80/59 VS 58/?? (Do they have 40 Athletics? 50/50 - 44) Yes. Random Event (This was a cheeky question that I should have asked BEFORE the roll, but eh)

28. Random Event Close a Thread - Phoenix removals - ‘Leave Completion’ Tan Jacket? 31 Yes.

29. Sanity (Unnatural) 31/51 (0 Sanity Lost)

30. Sanity (Unnatural) 29/51 (0 Sanity Lost)

31. End Scene. Chaos Factor 7. Test Scene - 6 Interrupt Scene - NPC Action - Separate Intellect - Debbie Graves.