For What Ails You
The pitch
Marvin Levy is dead, which is not strange given the number of serious medical conditions he suffered from. The strange part is that he died only two days ago, after a traffic accident he walked away from.
Background Info
In the early 2000s March Technologies experimented with unearthed Yithian tech to create an addictive espionage device. The device, codenamed the Remedy, was not what they thought it was and by accident they unwittingly trapped a time traveling Yithian within it. The Yithian played along showing MT what they wanted to see, until it made its escape.
The trapped Yithian, puppeteering Marvin Levy was close to achieving its own goals when a freak traffic accident threatened to draw attention to it, forcing it to ditch its puppet and stash itself in a nearby antiques store in Portsmouth near Boston, Massachusetts.
March Technologies has dispatched a 3 man team to retrieve the Remedy. A few in-game hours into the game, they will intercept the ambulance that carried Levy to the hospital with tire spikes and kill the EMTs. The apartments where the EMTs lived will then be broken into and searched. If the players manage to get to the Middleton powerstation, the March Tech squad will arrive there shortly after. If the players do not go to Middleton powerstation, the March Tech squad will come to them.
Briefing
Real purpose: Investigate Levy and the accident.
Cover: FBI agents working on a new case against Levy’s infamous televangelist mentor, Allan Emory Bird.
Requisition: Handler should be somewhat generous, DG are worried about this blowing up.
Marvin Levy - Delta Green file
- Former traveling evangelical preacher, taught by an infamous televangelist.
- Age 42, no close family, few recent associates.
- Current address is a decrepit rural homestead just outside Rochester, New Hampshire (2 h drive from boston)
- Briefly returned to being a traveling preacher after a miraculous cancer recovery in 2009.
- Was investigated by Delta Green in 2009 in connection with his recovery. At that time, he was thought to be benign.
- Homosexual, closested and deeply in denial.
- Autopsy reveals widespread cancer, diabetes, malnutrition, pneumonia, parkinsons, sclerosis, among numerous other issues. The car crash itself seems to only account for a severely broken right leg and fractured upper right arm.
Locations
Accident Site & Antiques Store
A pickup truck lost control on the icy road around midnight a few days prior and collided with Levy’s Ford, killing the truck driver and totaling Levy’s Ford. Levy slipped away before onlookers arrived and was compelled by the remedy to break into an antiques store and stash it amid the oddities there.
Damages on the scene mark the exact location of the accident. Players may locate secondary witnesses who may recall seeing someone walking east away from the accident, some may even remark that the antiques store close to here had been broken into that same night (for railroading).
Ways to discover the antiques store:
- Going over the police reports for the accident night (20% bureaucracy req.).
- Security camera at the pawn shop across the street (40% to hack / 40% bureaucracy req.)
- Systematic search of the area (40% Forensics req.).
- Aforementioned questioning of witnesses.
The antiques store is crammed with trinkets and baubles, the remedy hidden among them. The owner is cooperative. Should the players search the antiques store, the player that succeeds with the highest roll finds the Remedy. If they enter the store but do not search it, a random player finds it. If they do not enter the store, a random person finds it.
Levy’s Home
Two stories of living space with adjoining garage and shed for gardening equipment, all in glaring disrepair. The ceiling in the garage has collapsed from rain, leaving it a moldy, flooded mess. The kitchen is stuffed with cans of beans and lentils which appear to have been a staple, if not the sum total of Levy’s diet.
A single staircase gives access to the top floor of the house. One of the steps triggers a trap and in an instant the stairs are flooded with a sticky crimson foam trapping anyone on the stairs as it swiftly hardens. Dex x 5 - 20 % to avoid. Anyone not trapped may free trapped characters in 20 min with tools found around the place. 0/1d4 SAN to witness, 1/1d6 SAN if caught in the trap.
Levy’s office is where the Yithian did its research. Above a strangely modified computer, a brass plate has been chemically etched in a strange pattern. POW x5 to avoid being mesmerized upon seeing it. Mesmerized individuals may test POW x5 once an hour to escape, otherwise they continue staring at the plate. 0/1 SAN to see the plate, 0/1d4 to see or be mesmerized.
Bonded characters will auto succeed checks against both traps.
The computer is not password protected. On it, a worrisome amount of info on Delta Green and March Technologies is readily available. A Middleton Powerstation Green Box is given special attention.
Middleton Powerstation Green Box
A chainlink fence surrounds the facility. The green box looks like a shipping container next to the locked off maintenance building. Close-up you can see it is a welded steel box made to look like a shipping container. Power tools on the scene make it possible to access it (the bonded character knows how to use power tools). The machine inside is incomprehensible, constructed of green tinted metal and curving glass tubes. An ominous gaping hole the shape and size of a large adult human dominates the front
The Yithian wants to activate the device in the green box. To do so it must compel the bonded player to open the container, hook the device up to the power station and then step into it. If compelled, the bonded player must attempt to make this happen by any means.
March Tech will arrive 1 hour after the players. They want to take the Remedy and leave no witnesses.
Aftermath
If the Remedy succeed in activating the device, the Yithian possesses a high-ranking March Technologies member and launches a war on Delta Green, in order to prevent both organizations from interfering with Yithian schemes. The bonded character is roasted alive by the immense power required by the device and dies.
If the Remedy is stopped either by destroying it or containing it with the MT squads equipment, everyone gains 2d4 SAN.
If a player survives being bonded with the Remedy, they gain 3 POW (and suffer the SAN loss of realizing its nature somewhere along the way).
The Remedy
To the casual observer it is utterly mundane: a gray canister about the size of a deodorant can with a detachable lid. On close inspection, a faint luminescent pattern of staggering complexity coats the main body. If a player comes into contact with the remedy, they will perceive it as pleasing to the touch and obviously very useful in a vague way. They are now bonded with the Remedy and will be subject to both the boons and compulsions this brings. If the remedy leaves physical contact with the bonded character for longer then a few minutes, boons and compulsions cease. The Remedy also emits a significant amount of gamma radiation, which the March Tech squad uses to track it.
The Yithian inside the remedy has a single goal: get to the Middleton Powerstation Green Box and activate the device inside. Preferably it wants to do this covertly. It may drop the bond with a character if they do not obay.
Remedy boons
- Even Death May Die: Physical damage does not kill nor impair a bonded character (until they are no longer bonded).
- Invisible Control: STR, CON and DEX +5.
Witnessing the bonded character survive obviously fatal damage causes a 2/1d10 SAN check.
Remedy compulsions
Whenever the remedy attempts to compel a player, test the players POW x5 at - 20%. If the player succeeds, they can ignore the compulsion, on a critical success they become aware that the remedy is sentient and that they are linked (1/1d8 SAN, gain 2 POW). Otherwise, they do not attribute the strange urges to the Remedy.
- Drink From Me: Urge to fill and drink from the Remedy - it tastes much better that way!
- Conceal Me: Urge to hide, lie about and downplay the importance of the remedy.
- In the Know: Compulsion to be the one communicating with the handler, or failing that to eavesdrop on communication with the handler.
STATS
March Tech Goon
STR 12, CON 14, DEX 12, INT 9, POW 10, CHA 9, HP 11, WP 10, SAN 35, BP 30
Armor: Kevlar Vest (3)
Skills: alertness 45%, Athletics 35%, melee combat 50%
Attacks:
H&K MP4 SMG 50% attack - Full-auto: 10% Lethality, Single shot: 1d10 dmg
Bowie knife 50% damage 1d6
Special Equipment: High-powered magnetic remedy containment device. Sophisticated gamma radiation tracker.
San check: If their faces are examined, it becomes apparent these three men are clones of the same bald, chinese-featured man. 1/1d4 SAN.
Credits
For What Ails You was written by Johannes Garm Houen for the 2021 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q90kdpqVBhit2hvGSUnuMqmUDZvBdbg2TG0D_Jpb5lY/edit