Post Script - At The Edge of Reality

Breaking down Operation Lost Herald

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Photo by Roman Kirienko: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-running-on-green-field-near-gray-mountain-under-white-clouds-8775536/

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Oh Dear. A lot happened in this operation, quite a bit of it behind the screen, so to speak. I’ll start of by saying that Winter Strain took me a couple of months of play to get through, between small sessions and the word count, I felt like I wanted something more like ‘Last Things Last’,¹ a punchier shorter mission to wrap up a plot thread or two and then jump into another bigger mission. But I realized early on that, this being Delta Green, every mission should count, because who knows if Kat is going to survive! Take heed, fellow Solo-RPG players, especially those of you with less time on your hands; every scene counts. There’s no filler in a Solo-RPG, it’s all you, writing/playing important moments for your character and the story. Especially using Mythic, because it will turn your filler into a character defining moment and completely derail your planned plot points. It is a feature, not a bug, so embrace it! Let’s dive in breaking down Lost Herald!

Narrative - Inspirations

I liked listing my inspirations in my last Post Script, so I’m going to start there. Bellow are the main things floating around my head while I played through Lost Herald.

• Horror Board Games - Mansions of Madness is a game I own and have only played a couple of times, but it’s paired with Betrayal: House on the Hill (and to a lesser extend, the Choose your own adventure book: Hell House) as being one of my favorite horror concepts; a house full to the brim with nasty secrets. I’ve since purchased the Call of Cthulhu source book for Mansions of Madness that also has a number of scenarios based around a large house as a backdrop for the horror, and I just really enjoy the trope. There is something fun about a haunted house. Delta Green has a few scenarios for haunted houses, Music from a Darkened Room and From Dust are the two that spring to mind, but I wanted to capture that feeling that any room could have something horrible waiting in there. I wanted it to be claustrophobic, which is kind of ironic, because Kat ends up in a literal jungle, but it worked.

• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - This is one of Lovecraft’s longer stories revolving around a young scholar who bears a striking resemblance to one his ancestors who was from Salem, and the problems that arise from digging too deep.² I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it, but it’s creepy and a little sad, and was the main inspiration for Palmer’s backstory that is revealed near the end. The prompts from Mythic did some of the work, and then I tried to think about what could connect the clue from the house to the Ice Cave. The scenario ‘Hourglass’ deals with a similar situation in a different way, if this has peaked your interest.

• The Handler’s Guide - Obviously the Handler’s Guide is an inspiration for every missions because it is packed with DENSE LORE but I’m referring specifically to 2 aspects - Katherine Oakes and the ICE CAVE. While playing through Winter Strain, I had seen a conversation happening on Discord³ about the NPCs from the book. “They Exist for a reason.” was the main theme there, and so I had another look through the book and thought ‘do any of these folks fit in to the story I’m making?"‘ Given the mission was to track/hunt down Dr Palmer, The Director of Security made the most sense. Oakes is a pretty interesting character, functioning as the ‘High Executioner’ for the Program, doing lots of the dirty work while other members get to research or run analytics. Depending on how the mission rolled out, I could see Oakes playing a larger role in the story, given Kat’s skills.⁴ When ‘The Director’ came on the line due to a Random event, I started to think that there was something more here, another reason for the investigation, and that’s when the ICE CAVE came into the picture. To cut a really interesting piece of lore short, the ICE CAVE is one of the oldest secure facilities in DG lore, dating back to Roswell in the 50s.⁵ It also gave me the two, humanoid monsters that we encountered, the unnamed K’ynanni⁶ in the bone and blood circle and Bao, the Tcho-Tcho. I’ll talk a bit more about Bao and the Tcho-Tcho later.

• The Plateau of Leng - Less direct inspiration and more a concept I really liked. The Plateau is described a bunch of different ways, from a place in the Dreamlands, to an arctic desert on the edge of reality, to a lush jungle in South East Asia. It’s mentioned in passing in the Handler’s Guide, and in a few stories in Lovecraft’s circle without ever being fully defined.⁷ I really liked the idea of a place that is kind of an Inbetween place, a Nexus point, where if you have the right know-how, you can travel anywhere. The idea of travelling through a painting was a cool concept, and fit in with some of the themes of the importance of art in various Cosmic Horror stories.⁸

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Mechanics - The Clues

So, I had my setup, and I went into the house, and then…. What? I didn’t want to run a bunch of Yes no Questions, and the open answers seemed a little too vague, so instead I rolled on a bunch of tables, compiled a decent number of clues, and then investigated them one by one, rolling randomly to see which clue was in each room. The fun part was connecting them in my head afterwards because I actually don’t like Red Herrings much in investigative games. While I’m a big supporter of "If it doesn’t fit, chuck it.” because not everything needs to be relevant, I also like the mental exercise of putting the pieces together. So, I’m going to put the clues here, and then tell you what I put together during play and during editing.

• Bad Breath smell throughout the house.

• Police Reports, starting a decade ago, and going back to the 30s.

• Several human fingernails and bestial claws arranged in a strange pattern within a circle carved into the floor

• Passports

• Oriental dragon box

• Leopard body with goat head (taxidermy)

• Statuette/Idol

• Blueprints

• Missing People

The Taxidermy never came up, and so it was just in the pile of occult and weird shit that Kat refers to early in the investigation. The police reports, missing people and Passports were part of Palmer’s initial investigation, and were either victims of Palmer’s Grandmother, or a creature that was connected to her, and there was a Delta Green investigation to follow up one the missing people, which is why there was a bungled investigation surrounding her ‘death’. How I imagine it, given what we discovered about Palmer’s grandmother, was that the 1960 Delta Green⁹, still a legitimate organization at this point, tracked down and eliminated the grandmother, but she hopped bodies, which is why there is a picture of her ‘after’ her death. A follow up investigation captured her, which is why she is in the Ice Cave. The Idol also belonged to Palmer’s grandmother, and was possible the cause of the initial disappearances. It was held in the dragon box, which was lead lined and designed to contain the monsters, but Palmer let it loose while investigating. The Blueprints were, of course, stolen by Palmer while possessed by the Grandmother, which allows me to handwave slightly how Palmer found the plans and took them to Montana when they would have surely been kept secure. Finally, the Bad Breath ties into the strange pattern and circle carved into the floor. Only Kat can smell it, and it either ties into the Circle, or the creature it contains. The description made me think of a binding circle, so a few Mythic Questions later, we had the K’ynyani.

That’s a bit of a jumble, right? I’m not sure if I’ll do this multitude of clues again, it was a little odd, but it really captured the feeling of investigating and feeling like ‘I don’t know how this is relevant yet, but I will keep a note of it.’ It was cool to tie the mundane clues into the obviously unnatural ones, but the nature of investigations means usually it’s not as pertinent to roll up 6 or 7 clues every time I find a crime scene, and it can use up these useful Random Tables too quickly! But, I do suggest it if you want to do a condensed, single location investigation.

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Mechanics - Sanity

So, we have another big change to Kat’s psyche, she is now adapted to Helplessness, which means she no longer needs to roll Sanity for Helplessness and just passes it automatically. This now means she is ‘Double Adapted’ which isn’t great for her Character ‘growth’ but is very fun for her character ‘development’

Mechanically, this means she loses d6 POW¹⁰ and her total Willpower points also go down from 12 to 10. This is not as bad as it could have been, and hopefully she will not need to Project as much now that she auto passes anything not overtly Unnatural, however, this does affect how many times she can Project Sanity loss before having an emotional breakdown or passing out. We will see how often that comes up, but with her bonds on the decrease, there are going to be some harder choices for failed Sanity test moving forward. Speaking of Bonds….

We have our first Bond hitting 0. Bond losses do not happen instantly, at least, not how I play. Bond reductions happen during Home scenes, and one hitting 0 costs 1/1d8 from Helplessness. A good Job Kat’s adapted I suppose. When a bond hit’s 0, it is irrevocably damaged. You divorce your spouse, hospitalize your best friend in a fit of rage, your kids’ go no-contact, that kind of thing. I won't spoil the surprise, but we will see how this bond score gest resolved in an upcoming chapter. On the subject of Bonds, despite all of the bad things that happened, and her decreasing Sanity, Kat’s doing pretty good on the bond front. We have 4 Delta Green Bonds, Montford, Palmer, Tracy and Jasper. Palmer’s bond is looking a little dicey, but Kat failed her sanity roll at the end of this mission, so she has formed a trauma bond with Tracy, and increased her rating with Montford and Palmer by a d4 each. My plan with these bonds is different than Kat’s normal bonds, as the agent’s should feature more heavily in the narrative, and so I want to make sure that when I project on them, there is a story reason, and then have the score reflect how well the Agent’s work together. It’s why Montford is less of an asshole to Kat these days, because their bond is actually a 9 now, which is pretty solid. Increasing these bonds is actually what put the nail in the coffin for Kat’s bond with her mother; I had projected onto it earlier, getting the score down to a 1, and when you trauma bond with your Delta Green friends, you lose 1 from all non-DG bonds.¹¹ Other than poor Isla, Kat’s other bond’s are looking a mostly ok. Danielle is pretty strong after the last Home Scene, you don’t cover up a murder for someone and not get a bit of bond score, in my book at least, so Danny is up to a 9, with Markus and Kat’s long suffering FBI partner at a 5 each. Not great, but still a lot of Sanity shielding left there.¹² She’ll need it.

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Narrative - The Problem with Bao

I really liked writing Bao, he was ominous, cocky and kind of mysterious. I would love to include him more in the future. But I haven’t added him to the Characters list, and unless something big happens in the story, I likely won't bring him back. And the big reason for the is the Tcho-Tcho. I had imagined the Tcho-Tcho as similar to ghouls, in that they start off as human, and through strange, alien magic and rituals¹³ they become something different, immortal, and possibly monstrous. Certainly that’s how I wrote Bao and the bestial one that get’s shot early on. That isn’t’ really what they are though, and if I had read some of the other source material, I don’t think I would have included them. I think the main problem is that while most of the other Cosmic Horror creatures, your Ghouls, Deep Ones and Shoggoths, have plenty of questionable aspects to their origins, they’ve been included in, to but it bluntly, a non-racist capacity for long enough that it’s easy enough to separate the scary monster from Lovecraft’s fear of people that didn’t look and sound exactly like him. With the Tcho-Tcho, it just isn’t possible.¹⁴ If anything, modern writers seem to move into it more, with the modern Tcho-Tcho in Delta Green co-opting an Anti Racism movement to move around and operate unnoticed. And hey, that’s pretty clever, and hell, people do it in real life without being Cosmic Horror Monsters, but it isn’t really something I want to write about. So Bao goes on the shelf. It’s not like Kat needs a nemesis, she has enough shit going on. It would have been nice to keep that knife though.

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What’s Next?

So, a couple of changes from my usual release schedule. First, due to popular demand¹⁵ I’m going to be releasing a “How To” for my next post. This will have a collection of what I’ve learned for playing Delta Green with Mythic, and some advice for getting started. I hope people find it useful, I genuinely believe this system is amazing from a solo journaling perspective because the themes can be so personal. If you are ever thinking of getting stated playing Delta Green Solo, send me a DM! The other change is that there will be no home scene this time. I have asked the Dice, and they have informed that there has been some confusion with Kat’s flights. Next week, we will be jumping straight into Operation Broken Ace. I know, with a name like that, only good things are in store.

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Thanks for reading! Let me know how you found Lost Herald in the comments and thanks again for coming along with Kat on this journey! See you next time.

1. This is the scenario found in the ‘Need to Know’ guide and it is an excellent starter scenario. I played through it for the prologue, but one day I will run it for people.

2. The is a pretty large over-simplification of the plot, but eh, it’s one of the better ones if you like your horror a bit more personal and less monstrous.

3. The Stories and Lies Discord, to be specific, they do great work! Check them out if your Actual Plays on Audio. Stories and Lies does a great job of weaving the premade NPC’s into their podcast and it really makes the setting pop.

4. Although her skill sheet would indicate that she is a people person, Kat’s main skill seems to be killing whatever life throws at her.

5. If that makes you think of aliens, it should! Old School DG had a lot of UFO conspiracy lore woven in.

6. A off-shoot of humanity that made their own civilization that is much more advanced than ours, they live, or at least some of them live, underground in a kingdom of the same name.

7. When I first read through a bunch of Lovecraft’s works, it felt like every time a main character found somewhere kind of weird, they would exclaim “Tis the fabled Plateau of Leng!”

8. I think I stole idea that from Elder Scrolls IV. I know, I wish I had a better cultural touchstone, but I loved that game growing up! It was either that or Mario 64.

9. Majestic 12 was also active at this point, and has stewardship of the Ice Cave, so it might have been them, rather than Delta Green, but I don’t want to get to into the weeds.

10. 2, which is very lucky

11. I think this is supposed to be symbolic of ‘The Mission’ taking up more and more of the Agent’s life.

12. A totally mentally healthy way to refer to loved ones, trust me I’m a professional.

13. Hypergeometry, as those in the know call it

14. For me, at least. I’ve read a few people online who say that it all depends on how you handle it, but as yet, it seems like a lot of work and writing around the main core of their existence

15. Popular for me, at least!