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‘God’s Hunt’: Spiralling Terrors for Delta Green
🕑 Added 2023-08-14 20:04:10 +0000 UTCIn the campaign God’s Teeth, Agents in support roles for Delta Green must confront the aftermath of a long-ago horror. When they have—one hopes—ended the threats, they find themselves brought to the front lines of Delta Green operations. Only after a few more years do they learn that the worst threat of all has lingered and grown and spread.
What happens in those intervening few years? That’s up to the Handler. Perhaps God’s Hunt.
Delta Green: God’s Hunt collects four scenarios that can be faced by any Agents but that are specially aimed at the desperate survivors of God’s Teeth. Each scenario can be played on its own or they can be combined for fractal patterns of fear, a campaign within the campaign.
This post contains spoilers.
GOD'S EYE
A mathematician inexplicably vanishes from a secretive surveillance company in Reno. She is only the first. Can the Agents recognize a pattern of killings and disappearances in time? Or will they be next to fall under the unblinking gaze of a pitiless power?
Written by Caleb Stokes and Shane Ivey, God’s Eye first appeared in Caleb’s original run of God’s Teeth on Role Playing Public Radio. Details and revelations of unchecked police surveillance in the years since then have made its implications even more dire. A pre-layout draft is available on Dennis Detwiller's Patreon.
“I’m in Sparks. It should be at this address. Across the street. I’m at 1281 Gault Way. It should be happening now. I think. Maybe soon. The math isn’t precise yet. If it’s anything at all. It feels like I’m on the edge of figuring this out. Or maybe like I’m going crazy. Anyway, I’m going to check it out.”
She gets out, leaving the camera on to document her actions. She’s perhaps 30, maybe younger, with a mop of red hair; someone concerned with things more important than appearances. In the street, she looks back as if to check that the camera is working. She looks at her watch. Then she pauses, standing still, lost in thought. Her head turns slightly back toward the camera. Then she’s gone.
GOD'S BREATH
“I then proceeded to ascertain the video feed of the cell in question over the right shoulder of the guard. The suspect puked up—sorry, regurgitated—what appeared to be…some sort of alien worm, sir. It engaged with the canine unit for a moment, but then visual confirmation was lost when concussion grenades were used. By the time optics had recovered in the security center, the threat had been neutralized by the accidental ignition of…of a contraband accelerant present in the suspect’s cell.”
Late 2017. The halting, clumsy progress of marijuana legalization has attracted a particularly adventurous breed of entrepreneurs developing ever more powerful breeds of their product. Some seek riskier sources than others. When Delta Green sends Agents to investigate a seemingly unnatural death in Denver, they find strains of awfulness growing deeper than the Earth.
Written by Caleb Stokes, God’s Breath too first revealed itself on RPPR. Caleb playtested it recently for Dead Channels and posted a playtest draft.
GOD'S LAW
Many Agents of Delta Green are law-enforcement officers who commit crimes with impunity. They are hardly the only ones.
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department services forty-two separate cities and the largest jail system in the U.S. For decades, it has been recognized by federal agencies, civilian investigators, and whistleblowers as one of the most corrupt institutions in the country. The LASD does not merely harbor the racist sadists found throughout policing. Criminal gang operations compete for rackets under the shared impunity of the badge. Atrocities attributable to these “cliques” put many drug cartels to shame. Charges are rare and convictions unlikely.
Depending on the election cycle, the federal government ignores, scolds, or actively endorses deputy gang activity. For decades, the LA municipal budget has included annual allocations for lawsuit settlements paid to the gangs’ ever-expanding list of victims. Multiple sheriffs have been elected on promises of reform while sporting their own gang tattoos. The secret is open. All is known. Nothing done. Violence, greed, and evil form the Order the system protects and serves.
When a deputy gang encounters the unnatural for the first time, it begins twisting older, deeper laws towards the same tired avarice. They expect the government’s usual complicity. They find Delta Green.
God’s Law is a new scenario by Caleb Stokes. He posted a playtest on Dead Channels. An early playtest draft is on Dennis Detwiller’s personal Patreon. If you visit certain parts of L.A. while playing it, watch out.
GOD'S LIGHT
The great achievement of social media has been to isolate users in experiences and communications curated to suit their most antisocial tendencies and obsessions. Sometimes it feels like reality itself has shifted around you.
The speed at which a species translates thoughts into reality is the sole mark of distinction in the cosmos. For creatures bleeding through lower dimensions and hijacking minds across time, few physical laws cannot be shattered and reassembled to new purpose. For gods beyond the impermanence of flesh, the gap between thought and action, between dream and reality, is so narrow as to disappear.
Humanity’s sad approximation of this power is called the Internet. The choices we make, the accounts with which we interact, the things we type and say where a microphone can hear. All of it feeds algorithms that decide what matters to us most. It leashes the eyes that control the hands that steer our ecosystem. The combined belief of all humanity affects reality not one iota, but the singular Force that decides the laws of our universe offers no contradiction. It is as we are, a simulation without programmer.
The All-in-One has no animating consciousness to motivate argument against human delusion. It is the gate. It is the traveler. It is by nature hollow and reflective, without an ego to object to any creature tapping its veins.
—Meaning Without Master: The Mathematical Revelations of Dr. Wesley Cool
Written by Caleb Stokes and Shane Ivey, God’s Light first appeared with many different details as the final scenario of Caleb’s original God’s Teeth campaign on Role Playing Public Radio. He posted a playtest of the new version on Dead Channels. You can find a playtest draft at Dennis Detwiller’s Patreon. It is filled with strange and disturbing revelations. But when it’s done, your Agents may find the world better suited to them than before.
IRRUPTING SOON
The scenarios of God’s Hunt are being revised after playtesting and illustrated now. We expect to offer the first for sale in paperback and PDF just after publication of God’s Teeth. The others will come in the months following, culminating in a hardback compilation suited for the shelves of collectors and stores and the yawning, insatiable hungers of Agents and gamers and the godlike forces that move them.
Comments
Eric Christian Berg
When will we be able to pre-order this wonderous and terrible collection?
