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Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 04:28:41 +0100
From: "Scott Lavers"
I have just started to write a DG scenario that at its conclusion ends with a large scale raid (like Raid on Innsmouth). Does anyone have any suggestions as to how a mission this big could be kept quiet in this day and age. How for instance could a large amount of casualities be explained.
Your toughts and comments would be greatly appreciated.
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 00:15:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: The Man in Black
Oh yeah, that's about as sharp as a sack of wet mice, Scott Lavers:
Where is the location, and who is conducting the raid? Who do you want to keep the existence of this raid from; foreign powers, the general public, Stefan Alzis?
If you include airstrikes, naval bombardment and the such, then satellite reconaissance will reveal much about your preparations and operations.
A good cover story is some sort of large scale inter-service military wargame, maneuver or exercise of some sort. But even this is subject to "Eye in the Sky."
Perhaps you can just drop a few Fuel Air Explosive munitions on the place and say "Oops, a military fuel tanker aircraft crashed."
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 23:54:23 -0700
From: Phil A Posehn
Well…depending on the size of the objective you have several options. There are three or four areas where the public never asks any questions about due process;
Religious cults (see Waco)
Drug labs or dealers
"Domestic Terrorists" (I always think of butlers with high explosives)
Kiddie porn
One of these combined with "regretable colateral damage" can cover up almost anything
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 02:00:35 -0500 (CDT)
From: Don Juneau
Perhaps you can just drop a few Fuel Air Explosive munitions on the place and say "Oops, a military fuel tanker aircraft crashed."
An idea I have, to show the utter seriousness and scope of the threat to be dealt with (should the PCs get that far <EG>), is that someone, somewhere, *is* willing to make that final sacrifice… and will pass their cell's info up the line before they put it into the mountain.
(Actually, a KC-135 might work better than my original idea - methinks that Black Thumb-level defoliants are less likely to be shipped via air, unless it's a direct-to-target mission…)
Of course, I'm enough of a bastard for the long-lasting "control" of the cell in question to be redacted in such a manner, right at the climax of a convention-scenario/long-running-campaign, just for the shock value.
(Rather like the Cigarette Smoking Man's "retirement", or the removal of "Deep Throat" or "Mr. X" - their one anchor to it all, the untouchable man, the legend without peer, finishing out his end of the Opera without warning or hesitation or explanation… and leaving them alone to await whatever the future will bring.)
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 03:32:16 -0400
From: "Jason I. Gonding"
Scott Lavers wrote:
I have just started to write a DG scenario that at its conclusion ends with a large scale raid (like Raid on Innsmouth). Does anyone have any suggestions as to how a mission this big could be kept quiet in this day and age. How for instance could a large amount of casualities be explained.
You mean besides a large pipeline fire?
How about Jonestown II or Heavens Gate II (just on a bigger scale), except this time they immolate themselves like Buddist monks (or at least that's how it would appear). All you'd need would be a few "identifiable" bodies and a lot who are burned beyond recognition. If you get a Coroner or 2 who work for you heading up the clean-up, you can take care of the fiddly details like gunshot wounds and anyone who looks like they're going to squeal to the media loses their brakes, is the unfortuante victim of a drive-by (don't hear about these as much anymore tho), or snaps, and kills wife & kids, then self. It all depends on how ruthless you want to be.
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 09:35:11 +0100
From: Phil Ward
I have just started to write a DG scenario that at its conclusion ends with a large scale raid (like Raid on Innsmouth). Does anyone have any suggestions as to how a mission this big could be kept quiet in this day and age. How for instance could a large amount of casualities be explained.
Wooh, good questions a raid on a small-sized town, etc…
You're going to need to break all the lines of communicaiton out of the area, so local phone switches need to be taken down, as to cable junctions (?). Sattelite and radio comms are a little more tricky and might need to be taken down on a case-by-case basis (.22 plinkers anyone?), or by using some serious jamming (electrical storm, solar flares, AWACS…?).
Better hope the place has relatively restricted access too, so that you can cut the major roads with diversion signs, or police road-blocks, or fallen tree's, etc.
You could declare a massive outbreak of something nasty and have a (fake) CDC quarantine placed around the place, make it somehing bad enough (ebola, and all the other beauties that have been discussed), and you can readily explain the corpses away, and have the FEMA delcare martial law, etc. That way you can explain some of the bodies as 'shot whilst trying to escape', or looters!
Another important question, who exactly is carrying out the op? It's probably a dumb one, but if you're the US government, you can do all sorts of things, tissue samples from the ebola-victims' can be got from your bio-warfare centeres, etc.
If your DG, then you're probably in trouble, and you're better off handing the thing off to majestic in some way to, and giving them a reason to want the entire town dead…
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 09:59:31 GMT0BST
From: Robert Thomas
Hello Scott,
You might want to check out Shane's web page because M-cell is facing this situation at the moment addmittedly inadvertantly, but next weekend should be fun trying to explain 16 odd deaths and the burning down of a building in NY. All with the press one block away. Oh dear time for the famous battle cry "RUN AWAY!"
Anyway here's the web address:
You'll find the operation under M cell / Operation: Sandman.
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 20:14:45 EDT
From: Shane Ivey
I have just started to write a DG scenario that at its conclusion ends with a large scale raid (like Raid on Innsmouth). Does anyone have any suggestions as to how a mission this big could be kept quiet in this day and age. How for instance could a large amount of casualities be explained.
The previous suggestions for explaining the body count were right on target (so to speak). Just make sure you keep up the disinformation once the cover story ("100 Dead in Suicide Cult Before Feds Can Intervene, News At Eleven") is established. You need to make sure you have a few strategically-placed talking heads in your employ; extortion against politicians, news anchors, and prominent academics works well to secure a "neutral" observer or two who will comment on your behalf and laughingly dismiss any half-baked accusations of government complicity in the disaster. If the players don't get visionary enough to see to this sort of help, you as Keeper might allow them to watch in bafflement as such Delta Green patsies take the stage to back up their fabrication; if your cell doesn't take care of the cover-up, I imagine Andrea and company will do their part to keep the wrong people from asking the wrong questions. Blackmail and deception will be the place to start.
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 19:44:50 -0500 (CDT)
From: Don Juneau
Better hope the place has relatively restricted access too, so that you can cut the major roads with diversion signs, or police road-blocks, or fallen tree's, etc.
Interestingly enough, US 95 heading up to Bonner's Ferry, ID, has gone the way of all good things with a massive mudslide. There's still communications, but then, MJ-12 would have the resources to keep it looking "alive", wouldn't they?
<whistling innocently>
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 21:58:49 EDT
From: Shane Ivey
next weekend should be fun trying to explain 16 odd deaths and the burning down of a building in NY. All with the press one block away.
Let's not forget the dozen or so unwitting ESU/SWAT officers who disappeared, and the one who was shot to death after he went apeshit and started shooting up his fellow cops out on the street.
"Is there an 'Agent Mark' or 'Agent Michael' here? There's an Andrea on the phone…"
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 06:34:16 +0100
From: "Scott Lavers"
thanx for all the ideas, they've been very useful
Just to expand the question, the setting is a small remote town in Montana and all the residents are the victims of an MJ-12 scientist whos gone crazy and started using a protomatter to genetically alter them in various ghastly ways. Mj-12 have tried unsuccessfully to shut his operation down, so they are steering DG in his direction to see if they can stop him. Hopefully it will end in a Bloodbath so bad, that it will make the PC's think twice before steaming in.
My website is nearly finished www.southpark1.demon.co.uk please give it a visit, I hope you all will find something useful there.
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 02:21:14 -0500 (CDT)
From: Don Juneau
As a former Shambler in the Snow from central Montana, you might wish to have the conclusion during a nice Northern Plains blizzard… -50 degrees F with 40 MPH winds, 26 inches of sloppy-wet snow. Mmmm. Power and phones will be out. Possible radio interference. Hell, we've had the *gas* go out due to frozen valves and such, in some towns up on the High-Line. (Running across the Northern edge of the state, from Conrad to Glasgow or so.)
Send in the poor schmucks.. uhm, "intrepid agents", yeah, that's it, while the storm is still holding over the Rockies, and then snap a fast re-route to catch 'em overnight. (I *remember* that kind of thing: "The front will pass along the Rockies, but we'll be OK." Next morning, all the carbon-dioxide is frozen and you have to chisel your way out to the street…)
It doesn't take all that much to isolate, there; one -30 or so morning, there was a fire in (IIRC) California, which sent a cascading power-failure all the way up to the hydro plants. (We had something on the order of 4-5 dams within 50 miles of Great Falls.) So, from about 0630 until at *least* 1000, no electricity unless you had a generator. My breath was fogging inside *long* before it came back… no radio stations were on the air, certainly no TV. Phones were up, but highly loaded as everyone was calling either Montana Power or friends/relatives - and this was in a larger (50k?) town, with an Air Force Base. Shelby or Zortman could flat-out *disappear*…
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 23:14:58 +1000
From: Rob Shankly
Don't forget the importance of an event to distract the media. For instance, if naval gunfire kills half-a-dozen polynesians on a slow news day there might be big repercussions. But if someone puts a bullet into the President's car on the same day…