IntroductionDHS intercepted a text message from a known terrorist, Andrée Fournier, indicating a planned “event” at the University of New Mexico in Sante Fe. Delta Green knows Fournier is a dangerous cultist and activated the Agents to suppress a potential Incursion.

For the Handler: This scenario results in Agent deaths. Consider rolling up new Agents for this one.

Setup

Squad cars and ambulances surround a 70’s-ish building. The sign outside reads YATES HALL / PHYSICS. A walkway connects the building to the library next door.

Scenes

Main entrance

Signs of armed struggle. Bloody floor and walls. Blood smear going down the hall and around the corner indicates a dragged body. Blood isn’t pooled, it’s mopped up and pushed around. Bullet holes and blood spray indicate a firefight, not an execution. Cell service flickers rapidly between 1 and 0 bars.

Vibes: rotating amber strobes at 40ft intervals. Blaring alarm. 70’s asbestos institutional floor tiles. White painted cinderblock walls.

Security desk

A desk is 15 feet in front of two sets of sliding glass doors, like an airlock. The set of doors near the Agents are jammed open, repeatedly trying to close on something. They are cracked and riddled with bullet holes. More blood, more bullet holes in the walls; another firefight. The trail goes through without stopping. At the desk the CRT monitor shows static, which is strange since it’s hard-wired to the tower. An AK-47 lies abandoned.

Glass Doors

As the Agents approach, they feel a strange sensation, like quickly fluctuating waves of heat, light but perceptible pressure (radiation pressure) from through the doors, and a sour taste in their mouths.

The glass doors are jammed on the ruined face of a security guard (0/1D4 Violence). Inspection reveals gunshot wounds and a slit throat, along with a 14-inch “coffee-ring” in blood on the floor. Lack of arterial spray indicates post-mortem throat cutting. The base of a 5 gallon bucket is 14 inches in diameter (0/1 Helplessness).

In the decontamination area between the glass doors, lab coats hang on the left wall, white full-body hazmat suits hang on the right. Each coat has a tag clipped to the lapel, plastic except for a cutout revealing a black strip of paper. Along the top of the tag is a row of squares printed in a gradient from white to black labeled “Control, 50 mSv, 200 mSv, 400 mSv”… up to “10,000 mSv”. Control is white, 10,000 mSv is black.

SCIENCE: PHYSICS 40, MEDICINE 50 or SURGERY 50: This is a Personal Emergency Radiation Detector (PERD), indicating a more-than-lethal dose of radiation. (1/1D8 Helplessness).The Agents are being exposed to high levels of alpha, beta, and gamma ionizing radiation. Wearing the hazmat suits adds +2 to their rounds in Running Out of Time.

A locker next to the lab coats contains a Geiger counter. The needle is wobbling between 1000 and 5000 mSv/h. This dose is fatal, likely within a month, but could be extended with treatment.

Further down the hall is

The Laboratory Classroom

A wide, low window looks into the room. High, long table. Locking cabinets. A small safe in the corner, hinges burned through with thermite. Outside the room is a body, slumped over by the window; Fournier.

Fournier is wearing a janitor’s jumpsuit; no wounds, but ghastly and unwell looking.
Fournier died in agony, puking up thick gobbets of black bile and blood, eyes bulging and veins broken. Raw skin, red, blistered and peeling—symptoms align with Acute Radiation Syndrome. (0/1D4 Helplessness)
Fournier is wrapped around a tome, a journal handwritten in French in a tattered composition notebook (see [[[#h.21jqnzuo6mg7 | STATBLOCKS]]]).

When the Agents enter the classroom, the Geiger counter goes fucking nuts, the needle slams all the way to the right past 50,000 mSv. The air palpably sizzles. They mustdecide who is going in and who is staying outside.

Red string is hung all over the room. There’s a trough of bubbling blood around a bowling-ball-sized silver sphere. An equatorial gap across the sphere bleeds cobalt blue light. Horrible symbols are drawn around the moat in yellow paint marker.

There are six dead bodies:

Two dead security, shot center of mass.
Four dead people in street clothes. One gut shot, three slit throats. (0/1D4 Violence)
One has a skein of white string.
Another has a ritual knife. She cut the others’ throats before cutting her own.

Trough

Cultists carved a circular moat in the floor, six inches deep, seven feet across with concrete saws, abandoned nearby. The moat is full of boiling blood with a gasoline sheen. Seventeen bristling glyphs are painted in yellow paint marker around the moat. Glyphs and moat comprise a gate spell, manifesting as a visible black rim around the silver sphere at the center of the trough. Damaging or changing the glyphs stops the spell, as does emptying the moat.

String

String has been strung around the room, seemingly at random. Some are pulled taut, some hang loose. Closer inspection reveals:

The string was once white, but has been soaked in blood.
It is not multiple lengths of string, but is instead all one loop. There is no end or knot.
All segments of the string, including those draped loosely, are vibrating in a standing wave like a silent violin string.

This is a power amplification ritual. The fastest “solution” is to break the loop. The energy inside is released as a devastating arc of plasma. Dodge or 20% lethality.

Sphere

At the center of the trough is a dull gray 12 inch sphere. Investigation reveals the sphere to be two hemispheres pressed nearly completely together. A cobalt light, so bright as to be nearly white, leaks out between the two halves.

This is a plutonium core encased in a neutron reflector, like those used in early Manhattan Project tests at nearby Los Alamos Laboratory. The light is Cherenkov radiation, indicating a fissile state (1/1D4 Helplessness). Between the reflectors is a thin tattooed piece of human leather, the calling ritual to Azathoth.

Running Out of Time

When an Agent enters, move into turns. An Agent can survive 4 turns in the room. At the beginning of their 2nd turn, they roll 1d4:

Confusion: They don’t remember what they’re trying to do. Why are they here? They spend the turn dealing with this
Blackout: The Agent blinks, and they’re laying facedown on the floor. Take 1D4-1 damage from when they hit the ground.
Uncontrollable vomiting: The Agent begins throwing up blood and intestinal lining. Take -30% to all actions this turn.
Blindness: The Agent’s vision fades to black, and does not return this turn or the next. Impose whatever penalties seem reasonable.

When they run out of rounds, they die.

Cultists’ Plans

The Cultists worship Yog-Sothoth, and believe that the Other-God should be a supreme force, not one that shares its primacy with any other entity. They performed three rituals:
A ritual of power, amplifying the radiation output of the plutonium core by many orders of magnitude.
A gate ritual, specifying the core as one location and the court of the Other Gods as the other.
A calling ritual for Azathoth, a ritual intended to offer the Blind Idiot God a tribute of stellar rays in an act of supplication.
They are attempting to poison and weaken Azathoth with terrestrial radiation in order to strengthen Yog-Sothoth's position in the court of the Other Gods. The rituals intend to tear a hole from Earth into the center of infinity to dump gamma radiation directly into the Daemon Sultan’s court. The gate finishes manifesting, snapping open and letting the sphere tumble away, whenever the Handler thinks is most dramatic.

Endings

Stopped rituals:

All: unnatural crisis averted, nuclear crisis ongoing. Coverup needed. Fire or explosion destroys evidence, but the plume of radioactive particulate/ash kills thousands.

None: Cataclysm, Apocalypse. Madness and terror. The blind limb of some nameless gargantuan Other God may reach through and gently sweep New Mexico off the map. Coverup not needed.

Gate: The nuclear threat and the calling remain active, presenting a short term and a long term problem. Coverup needed, but not in the immediate.

Amplification: The gate and the calling activate, the orb tumbles away. But without the amplified radiation, there's no reason for Azathoth or its courtiers to retaliate, really. Coverup needed immediately.

Calling: Fournier missed his shot. The sphere strikes a glancing blow at best. Not ideal for humanity in general. Coverup needed immediately.

Gate and amplification: The calling remains active, tucked into the plutonium core. Not ideal, likely brings catastrophe to whatever blacksite-warehouse DG sequesters it to. Coverup needed, probably twice.

Gate and calling: The amplification doesn’t end on its own. Radiation continues to pour from the core, poisoning the land and people of the American Southwest for generations.

Amplification and calling: The gate doesn’t last forever, only as long as the blood fills the trough. Still probably not good for the Agents in the room.

Wordcount: 1497

STATBLOCKS

Tome:The Notebook of Andrée FournierIn French. Study time: Weeks. Science (Mathematics) +4%, Unnatural +4%, SAN loss 1d4

Rituals: Create Gate (flawed), Offer Tribute to the Cradle of Chaos (Call Forth Those From Outside - Azathoth), Boucle de Rétroaction n° 6.

This journal is written in French, in blue ballpoint pen with a clear hand. It is a standard graph-ruled composition notebook. The back one quarter of the pages are soaked through with blood and bile. It is so thoroughly irradiated that it cannot be handled without special protective equipment. The first half of the journal is largely systems and controls diagrams, nuclear and particle physics calculations, and some scattered notes and commentary by the author in red pen. The second half is, in large block capitals with illustrations, specific step-by-step instructions on how to conduct the three rituals. Skimming the tome with French 40%, Science: Mathematics 40%, or similar only takes a minute, and is enough to get a broad overview of the rituals simply from the section headings.

Créer Porte (imparfait) [Create Gate (flawed)]

Elaborate ritual. Study time: weeks; +1 Unnatural, 1D4 SAN. Activation: hours; 5 POW, 40 WP, 50 HP, 1D10 SAN.

This version of the Gate spell has been drastically simplified, somewhat reducing the cost to activate it. In exchange, however, the gate is temporary and will only lead to one place; the center of nowhere- the Court of Azathoth. The operator and assistants must spend a total of 40 WP painting unpleasantly bristling and geometric symbols around a circular trough, and then must ritualistically inflict 50 HP of damage onto sacrifices, filling the trough with their blood. Surviving participants will take 1d10 SAN plus the loss against violence as a disc-like gate begins to open at the center of the ritual.

Rendre Hommage au Berceau du Chaos (imparfait) [Offer Tribute to the Cradle of Chaos (flawed)]

Simple ritual. Study time: hours; 1D4 SAN. Activation: a turn; 6 WP, 1 SAN.

This ritual requires the five-hour creation of a tattooed skin, which must be set adrift between the stars where it will capture cosmic rays, ballooning out and drifting in the dark. The ritual costs are for creating the tattoo, not for whatever means it will take to send it to space. It calls and beseeches (not commands) Azathoth, offering a tribute of cosmic radiation. The normal SAN loss for seeing Azathoth (1d20/1d100) applies. The version in Fournier's notebook has been intentionally misconstructed to capture terrestrial radiation instead, in the hopes of poisoning the Daemon Sultan.

Boucle de Rétroaction n° 6

Complex ritual. Study time: days. 1d6 SAN, Activation: Hours, 12WP, 1d6 SAN.

This ritual captures and amplifies power in a feedback loop. The operator must first spend hours solving a monstrous equation, determining the vectors and the lay of the loop. The Operator then sanctifies a conduit- string, hair, rope, etc- in blood, and hangs it as dictated by the results of the equation. Contrary to how Fournier is using it, Boucle de Rétroaction n° 6 is not strictly limited to energy, although that is the most straightforward use case. Social capital is a type of power, as is physical strength, as is money. The more abstract the power, however, the more difficult the equation to solve. It is unlikely that a living creature will survive being the locus of the loop.

San Loss Suggestions

Coming across the corpse of a security guard	0/1d4	Violence
Realizing the security guard had been bled intentionally	0/1	Helplessness
Recognizing that the SIRAD/PERD shows a lethal dose of radiation	1/1d6	Helplessness
Viewing the scene in YATH 113	1/1d4	Helplessness
Getting a good look at Andrée Fournier	0/1d4	Helplessness
Identifying Andrée Fournier’s cause of death	0/1	Helplessness
Deciphering the purpose of the rituals and their implications	0/1d4	Unnatural
Solving the string ritual with Unnatural, Mathematics, or Occult	0/1d4, gain 1/1d4 unnatural	Unnatural

Credits

Decay Chain was written by Patrick G for the 2025 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zs8XgzWR_RB9BQdNyatgG56YHObTsOHRZ09zkjyOMgE/edit

page revision: 2, last edited: 29 Dec 2025 12:06

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