ALPHABET SOUP
for the Delta Green Shotgun Scenario Competition, 2024
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zHJjIMQb1PzG0UWlUJtOQIE04y2ZdaXwY4j9DlnaCWA
Eating for two.
A scenario for one player and the Handler, a solo session or to occupy one person during a party split. Best interspersed with ‘normal’ casework scenes to interrupt.
It touches on aspects of body horror and eating disorders.
Sanity damage of 1 should not contribute to Adaptation checkmarks.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
You awake starving,
desperately ravenous. You're in the fridge before the coffee's on, before your morning piss, before you're awake, staring at milk and pancake mix and orange juice and bacon.
What do you eat?
Describe it to me.
Be specific.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
You are experiencing food cravings,
to a deranged degree - not merely distracted, but verging on delirious with your need to consume… something?
At first, near anything will do. You half-empty the refrigerator before you leave for work, late, you swallow your chewing gum on the drive. At the office you're drinking creamer from the sachets and pounding sweetener tablets - somehow the coffee itself doesn't appeal right now.
The first time you express surprise or confusion at how uncontrollably hungry you are costs 0/1 SAN from HELPLESSNESS.
You feel full, queasy and bloated - but still hungry, drivingly hungry.
Now, what was it you were doing? Checking case reports or something?
Every hour you spend not actively seeking or eating something you haven't eaten yet is wasted time stolen away from you. Hunger distracts you - concentration, self control, social niceties - it all feels impossible.
Pass a POWx5 roll or be hangry about this distraction from food, suffering -20% to any relevant tests.
Each third morning, this multiple reduces - POWx4, then POWx3 - and the penalty increases - -30%, then -40%.
If you try to ignore the hunger, intrusive daydreams about exotic banquets will invade your day.
Describe it to me.
With escalating urgency, until it is nigh impossible to concentrate on anything else for ten seconds at a time, you dream of food.
After 4 hours ignoring the hunger, pass a POWx5 roll to snap out of this banquet daydream you find yourself in. Each third morning, the amount of time you can ignore the hunger for halves. This multiple reduces each third morning as above. E.g after six days, after 1 hour you must make a POWx3 roll to snap out of it.
When you concede that, undeniably, it is time for a snack, the clear focus of purpose lets you know that you have made the right decision.
Realising something is steering you costs 0/1 SAN from the UNNATURAL.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Each time you eat,
cross off the letters from the food's basic ingredients from the alphabet.
E.g. A boiled egg, cross off E and G. Pancakes, E G M I L K F O U R (oil or butter, and toppings, left to the player's choice. Be specific.)
Be generous in making these interpretations.
Each meal you eat that contains no new nutrients tastes like cloying cardboardy clay, coating the inside of your mouth like cold grainy porridge as you will yourself to swallow just to get it over with - this isn't what you want.
You want something else.
Describe it to me.
Be generous in suggesting potential meals or cuisine that might appeal, if no nutritious options are forthcoming.
Feeling so terribly galvanised to eat, inevitably there will be times when it feels like it can't be done - surely you can't physically fit any more in?
But you must. Somehow.
Refusing to follow your compulsion will incur the usual daydream, now with a new layer of profound guilt - you are wasting something by refusing to partake.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
What’s happening to you?
A parasitic homunculus has taken up residence in your stomach, clinging near your esophageal sphincter.
Hooked unnaturally into your gut microbiome and vagus nerve, this little homunculus needs all the special specific vitamins and minerals a growing child would - and it is hungry.
The homunculus grows very rapidly, and will reach the following developmental milestones after both enough time has elapsed and the requisite letters have been consumed.
Doctor, doctor!
Before 22 letters, given placement and size, it is unlikely that the lump would be identified as anything other than a cyst or tumour by imaging scans. Biopsies will reveal odd mixtures of tissues suggestive of a fast-growing malignant tumour, best operated upon within a week or two.
Receiving such a diagnosis costs 0/1d4 SAN from HELPLESSNESS.
After that, are you pregnant? In your stomach?
Knowing you shouldn’t be pregnant costs 0/1 SAN from HELPLESSNESS.
Knowing you cannot be pregnant costs 1d3/1d8 SAN from the UNNATURAL.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Oh Happy Day!
When you have eaten the entire alphabet, a child is born!
Within minutes of that final swallow, your insides twist, you feel tearing cramps and spasmodic convulsions of your abdomen, you retch with a violence you've never experienced before.
Nothing comes.
Again, the brutal compressive shove from your core, trying to get… something… up your throat, out of you.
Nothing comes.
Again.
You can feel the mass of macerated food and accumulated matter straining against your diaphragm.
It isn't going to stop.
You're going to have to push.
Make a CON, STR and POW roll. You must pass more than you fail to succeed.
On succeeding, you feel the thick lump driving up your oesophagus, muscles straining and tearing as you squeeze it up, up and up out of you.
You fall to your knees, prostrate before the pain, forcing your insides out through your jaw.
It feels so thick, incredibly long, so wrong, as if it should be impossible, and yet this, now, is the only way the ordeal can end - it must get out.
You choke, airways blocked by slimen lump and stringen mucus, spluttering splattered sprays across the floor in front of you.
With a final tearing squelch, you feel your jaw unhinge as the blockage rams past your diaphragm in a burst of distended smooth muscle and slaps onto the floor.
When you can open your eyes, there's a person before your face. They look like you just taken a swim in a sick bucket, and you’re five inches tall.
Seeing your own birthed self costs 1/1d6 SAN from the UNNATURAL.
It flops about dazed for about thirty seconds before coughing loose a tiny spray of bile and bits. They begin to crawl away, seeking a place of hidden darkness, finding their feet after the first couple of yards.
On failing, you choke, the pain and suffocating blackness dragging you under as your internal organs try to rip themselves free of their confines.
This is the end for you, in pain, filthy, drowning in your own sick.
Being fatally rent asunder and drowning in your own fluids costs 1/1d4 SAN from VIOLENCE.
When you come to, you've puked all over the room, the floor, yourself.
Barely a minute has passed, judging by the temperature of the pool you lie in.
With ragged breaths, you roll yourself back to your knees, to see… a trail?
A slimy line leads away from you. As you track it, you see it stops, turning instead into… tiny footprints?
The footprints lead to a dark corner, somewhere to hide.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
What are we going to do with you, little troublemaker, huh?
When you find and catch it, the homonculus is you, adult in all but it's newborn brain, in action figure scale.
Now what?
Micronutrients:
Some of these letters might be tricky to find in the daily diet. Suggestions for awkward letters include:
Q - Quinoa might be appealing for a light meal after a day of gorging. Quail's eggs, if you're bougie. A Quesadilla might have to do if you’re struggling.
X - Xanthum gum is widely used in chewy sweets and candies. Xylitol is a sugar replacement in diet sweet things.
Z - Zucchini in the American world, Zinfandel grapes in red and rose wines, Za'atar is a common seasoning in Middle-Eastern cuisine. Ziti is acceptable, in a pinch.
- 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 © the anonymous author (see the contest page), excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.
Credits
Alphabet Soup was written by MyNephew for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1auK7jMINpCY98LRooBOmCKrW_7XTv3O8Eya9BHuEe84/edit